


Burning Low

by Avelera



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: AKA that fic where Thorin goes to therapy, Alternate Universe - Bilbo Remains In Erebor, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Character Study, Depression, Erebor, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychology, Therapy, Thorin-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 18:22:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3988096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelera/pseuds/Avelera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erebor has been reclaimed, and all the Company survived, yet Thorin feels himself sinking deeper every day into a haze from which he cannot escape. </p><p>In which, after years of stress and responsibility, all of Thorin's many past traumas finally catch up to him in the form of a bleakness he cannot shake. An attempt at a realistic examination of how a mind like Thorin's would handle the kingship of Erebor after all he's been through. Includes scenes from daily life, therapist Gandalf, and established Bagginshield/Consort AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story began as more of a thought exercise and emotional dumping ground, but evolved into something I'm actually quite proud of. Namely, a realistic and fairly modern (for a fantasy setting) look at how someone who has suffered as much as Thorin would react to finally achieving all his goals. 
> 
> A few warnings/notes for the readers: while this story never becomes graphic in terms of blood or violence, it is a fairly unflinching look at the effects of psychological burnout, which in many ways is indistinguishable from clinical depression. Suicide ideation is mentioned, but is much less the focus than a general sense of bleakness. I do promise an eventual happy ending, this is much more about exploring Thorin as a character than it is about wallowing in misery. If "Prayers to Broken Stone" was my epic, metaphorical look at Thorin's potential for depression, this is my clinical/realistic one.
> 
> This is by no means the only outcome I see for Thorin reclaiming Erebor, and I do truly think he would be a good ruler. This is one possible take, one which takes into account the sheer amount of real trauma such a character would have experienced throughout his life (the fall of Erebor, the exile, Azanulbizar, the quest, the dragon sickness, the Battle of Five Armies, etc.) all catching up at once. 
> 
> I want to thank in particular all of my betas who made this work legible. At the time of writing this I still lack a comprehensive list of the names you'd prefer to be known as, but just know you have my unending gratitude! If you'd like to be thanked by name, please leave a message in your comment.

_This is a true thing:_

_He is not well._

_He is not well._

_He is not well._

_He is sitting in the dark and his eyes are closed and they are knocking, knocking, knocking until they are not._

_The dragon sickness was better._

_(He saw it, in his grandfather, and the golden light that bathed him. Thrór smiled. He had not smiled much before. Generous, giving, a dwarf who loved his family and his kingdom, but he did not smile often until the sickness came. Then he shone.)_

_This is a dark thing:_

_That he is ready. He has always been ready. He has ruled, and scrabbled, and fought for his people. He has wrangled guild leaders and tracked paths through the woods and built cities. He has crowned himself, and claimed his lands, and he has known lordship._

_He has never known this._

_When the sickness took him he dreamed of gold swallowing him down, dragging him away into madness and swirling, whirling confusion and everything was gold, gold, gold…_

_This? This is mud._

_It sucks at his boots and makes him slow, stupid. Dragging at his steps and when he looks down there is nothing great in it, no honor or courage, nothing even to resist. Yet it swallows him nonetheless and he cannot get free._

Thorin’s head falls back, thudding against the door. The footsteps have long receded. No further emissary comes for him that day, and the throne remains empty.

* * *

There was a _clink_ as the tray settled on the table, and when the door did not shut immediately after Thorin reluctantly opened his eyes.

Bilbo was seated at the breakfast table, currently in the process of buttering a scone when he caught sight of Thorin watching him. “Breakfast?” he said, proffering it. His tone was neither cheerful nor despairing. Though Thorin had barred his doors and left Bilbo to find his own quarters that night, there was no resentment there.

Thorin moved slowly, as if weighted down by the body’s ache of days spent fighting. Yet he had barely moved that day, or the day before that, and that ever-present fury bubbled beneath the lethargy, anger at himself that he could not seem to rouse from, before even that became too exhausting to contemplate. He took his seat at the table beside Bilbo, accepting without a word the plate of breakfast; sausages and a bowl of porridge set before him.

“Thank you,” Thorin said, picking at the porridge with his spoon. There was a smattering of honey on the surface, which vanished into the morass as he scraped the edge of the spoon over it, mixing it in until there was no trace of gold remaining.

“You might be pleased to hear the docket is clear today,” Bilbo said after swallowing his own spoonful of berries from the bowl of fruit at the center of the tray.

Thorin perked up at this, shoulders rising as he looked up and frowned at Bilbo. “I should think it would have doubled.” He had not known when the day escaped him, morning fading into night in the time it took him to doze off in that haze between waking and sleeping. It was gray there, the air heavy and the walls closing in with the whispers of the outside world. Moving was intolerable. Staying still was worse, and each pounding of footsteps was a drumbeat of his failure to move as the world bustled on without him, waiting while he languished.

Bilbo shook his head, expression nonchalant as he shrugged. “All dealt with.”

The spoon clattered to the table. “How is that possible? The line of petitioners was out the door!” Thorin hissed, his fingers clamped on to the edge, whitening at the knuckles.

Bilbo’s expression was carefully blank, not even a twitch to betray recrimination, or even acknowledgement of the seriousness of Thorin’s words. “None that were all that important once we had them settled. Honestly, we really must arrange a better screening process, the nonsense we had to listen to…”

“Was my responsibility,” Thorin cut him off. The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he felt ill. No excuse, no message, he had simply not left his room that morning, and let Balin and the others make what excuses they could to the literal hundreds of dwarves waiting to put their cases before him.  His skin felt clammy at the thought, but his gaze remained firm on Bilbo.

“What would you have us do, keep them waiting?” Bilbo said, the first flash of temper flaring, quickly dampened as he looked down at his scone, polishing it off before taking another, this one with jam. Yet the chill remained in Thorin’s stomach, twisting there like a snake. “Besides, you hardly need to be informed of every stolen chicken in the surrounding kingdoms. That’s what bureaucracy was made for.”

This caught Thorin by surprise, and he snorted despite himself. “And what would a hobbit from the Shire understand of bureaucracy?”

“More than you’d know,” Bilbo said, pointing the butter knife at Thorin, before turning back to his task. “Our town meetings are the stuff of nightmares, and heaven help you if you did not keep your garden up to neighborhood standards. It seems the less people have to do, the more they have to complain about. I don’t remember there being nearly so much trouble when there was an actual battle to tidy up.”

No, indeed there had not been. There had been purpose then, with the negotiations for Erebor’s future, the restitutions to Dale, the ceremonies to celebrate Dáin and the aid he brought in their time of need. Honoring the fallen. Before the clockwork of the world resumed, and Erebor ticked to life again, each day bringing more dwarves, more challenges, more rooms back to shining light, while his own clockwork seemed to simply…

“Stop,” Bilbo said and that butter knife was back, shaken at Thorin as if it were a finger at a recalcitrant child. “You’re getting that look again. As I said, there’s nothing to worry about. It was our fault for not dealing with more of them before they got to you, that line would have sent even a troll running for the hills.”

Thorin held up his hands, palms open in surrender. “Peace. You are right, there must be a better system to give aid to those who have need of it.” And one that did not depend on a king who could not even leave his own quarters, he thought, but did not let it show on his face. “How long will this respite last? Surely you could not have chased them all away forever.”

At this, any levity Bilbo had shown vanished. His expression became solemn. “Only a day, I’m afraid. Even old Balin needs your word on the worst of them.”

“How many?” Thorin said tonelessly.

Bilbo winced. “Ten? But they may be long ones. There’s the representative of the merchant’s guild from Ered Luin, an emissary from Orocarni, and someone from Gondor? They’re all here to see the king, and there’s not much we could do about that.”

Thorin sucked in a breath, letting the thought wash over him. “What did you tell them today?”

“That the king was busy, what else?” Bilbo said with a snort, this one derisive.

“But he was not,” Thorin said, and thought to meet Bilbo’s gaze but could not bear the shame of his own words, looking down blankly at the surface of his porridge. It was beginning to stiffen as it went untouched. “He did nothing today, Bilbo. _Nothing_.”

For a moment, Bilbo’s expression looked stiff and pale as Thorin’s porridge. Then he shook himself, easing back into his chair, features settling into the mask that Thorin now knew it to be. “Nothing wrong with that. Thorin, you’ve been trying to get this kingdom back for over a hundred years now. Everyone is allowed a rest.”

“Not the king,” Thorin said, and while his expression remained stone he wondered how long until all would see that it was cracking.

* * *

The malaise, that sense of paralysis that settled on his limbs worse than any wound, did not improve. Not that day, or the day after.

Thorin and Bilbo spent a pleasant morning alone in their quarters, lying on the bed while Bilbo read and stroked his fingers through Thorin’s long hair. He lay there, eyes shut as he half-dozed with his head in Bilbo’s lap. For a short time there was peace, and Thorin felt as if the scattered fragments of his self solidified somewhat. They did not reform, but he did not feel so brittle by the time evening fell. He even managed some polite conversation with Bilbo over their supper, just the two of them in their room, staying far away from the topic of governing. Bilbo had some questions on the construction of the city, and for a brief time Thorin was awake, even animated as he sketched invisible lines on the table to describe the magnificence of Erebor's structures, how the engineers had hewed a kingdom out of the rock.

Energy that fled the next day when he awoke--no more rested than if he had stayed awake the entire night--and realized he must face the waiting emissaries.

“We can’t hold them off all day, Thorin,” Bilbo said, sitting beside Thorin on the bed as he stared blankly at his iron-tipped boots.

“No, you are right,” Thorin said, scraping his fingers through his hair. They caught one of the braids as his listlessness made his hand slip downward, and Bilbo _tsk_ ed, patting and straightening the braid so it no longer showed its loose strands.

How he made it through the day he did not know. Each hour felt twice the length, every glance at the water clock in the corner revealing that no time had passed at all.

He could not _focus_. The words buzzed around his ears like gnats, and in truth it was not that he thought of other matters, but rather that a haze had descended upon his mind. Each step and movement was like struggling through cotton wool, and when his eyes drifted shut on the third hour, he saw the golden pools dragging at his feet the day the sickness had fallen from his mind, the flicker of the dragon’s tail beneath the surface as he struggled as if through syrup to free himself, and his eyes snapped open.

“Your Majesty?” the emissary from Orocarni asked, raising an eyebrow. Thorin could not miss the flicker of irritation in her eyes, but in truth he could not recall a word she had said.

“My apologies, could you repeat that?” Thorin said, as humiliation burned within, hotter than any dragon fire.

* * *

“I’m writing to Gandalf,” Bilbo announced. It had been a week, or perhaps longer. Time slipped through his fingers and he could feel the slow drip of the kingdom falling apart without his hand to guide it.

Thorin looked up from where he had been contemplating the crown beside the wardrobe. Still his grandfather’s crown, though he had thrown it away the day of the battle. He had thought of himself as casting off his right to the throne that day, going to his death only as Thorin Oakenshield, the kingship lost along with his honor.

Yet no one else had seen it that way. They had gathered around his sickbed after the battle and declared him King under the Mountain, Dáin pledging his forces until Erebor was restored to its former glory.

“He has greater matters to attend to than the failures of a single dwarf,” Thorin said, and turned away from the crown. Wanted or not, it was back in his hands and he had not served it well.

“For a king of dwarves and a friend, I think he may make the effort,” Bilbo said. “He went all the way to the Shire, after all, to put my affairs in order there. I don’t see why he wouldn't come and help you.”

“And what help do I need, Bilbo?” Thorin said. “It is not the affair of a wizard that I cannot rouse myself, that I shirk my duties and cannot hear the words of my own subjects.” The last he snapped, anger like the flickering tongue of a flame within him. “I am not the king he placed upon the throne.”

“You _are_ ,” Bilbo said, taking Thorin’s hands. He looked down in surprise to see Bilbo’s softer, stubby fingers clasped around his own scarred hands. “Oh, this is ridiculous. Thorin, just _talk_ to him. This is not natural, and I don’t like the smell of it. If there is some witchcraft upon you, then Gandalf can suss it out.”

 _Witchcraft?_ Or the dragon sickness, taken on some new and insidious form? The thought should have terrified him, but Thorin found himself strangely comforted instead. Indeed, some curse would be a welcome relief, for it could be cast off, banished, and he need not face the possibility that this bleakness was all that he would ever know.

“Write him,” Thorin said, relief and trepidation both twisting in his gut. “Though I doubt he will come.”

In retrospect, he should have remembered the primary habit of wizards, that of doing what one least expects.

* * *

Balin had shown a frankly suspicious level of relief at the sight of the grey wizard, and the look he exchanged with Bilbo would have had Thorin growling with the realization that  they had planned this, if he had the energy to do so. Once again his schedule had been cleared of meetings he could ill afford to miss, and rumor had it that Fíli was handling much of what should have been his responsibility. Far too soon, and far too much. He itched at the thought of the burdens he was leaving upon his young nephew, not even yet reached his first century, but he swallowed it. The alternative was leaving the responsibilities unattended entirely, and in truth he had  been even younger than Fíli was now when he became the leader of the exiled dwarves of Erebor.

He sat with Gandalf in the quarters he shared with Bilbo, and at a nod the hobbit departed, closing the door behind him to leave the two of them in peace. The year he and Bilbo had lived together had left Thorin with a particular taste for tea, indeed it would have been impossible to avoid it, and a kettle hung warming over the hearth as he faced off with the wizard and erstwhile fifteenth member of Thorin's Company.

“Bilbo tells me you’ve been feeling poorly of late,” Gandalf said, clasping his hands around his own steaming mug. “He informed me of some details, but I thought you may wish to tell me your own account.”

Thorin hesitated as the words rose in his throat and seemed to choke the air from him. It was an effort to breathe, much less speak: a slow, sucking feeling of lethargy worse than death, for death at least he had felt, nearly bleeding his life out on the ice not far from Azog’s corpse. He knew it was not true, remembered clearly the months spent bedridden from his wounds with pain as his constant companion, but in that moment Thorin felt he would have gladly exchanged the heat of battle if it meant the loss of this sucking cold.

“My duties are…unmanageable for me, at present,” Thorin said, his tongue thick in his mouth to even speak the words. He struggled, and looked to the door to assure himself it was indeed closed, though he still pitched his voice low against eavesdroppers. “Bilbo fears it may be some witchcraft, a… _gift_ , left behind by Smaug. Something akin to the dragon sickness.”

“I see no such shadow upon you,” Gandalf said, frowning, and Thorin thought his heart may stop to hear it so baldly stated. The wizard must have sensed this, for his expression changed. “Though I see that excuse would not have been so terrible as what you now face. Would you care to start at the beginning, Thorin?”

“Where would I begin?” Thorin scoffed. “The day I left my sickbed? The months I could not hold my own court?”

Gandalf hummed thoughtfully. “Try before,” he said. “Tell me of the days after the mountain fell.”

Thorin gave him a flat stare. “I can assure you, Gandalf, I had no such malady when we wandered in exile on the road. If I had, I and many of my people would have starved.”

“Precisely,” Gandalf said. “Thorin, I suspect that in all your years, you have never allowed yourself the time to rest, or mourn for what you have lost.”

Thorin thought back, to the mud that soaked through his knees when he knelt outside the mountain, tears burning his cheeks as he took his nascent beard in hand and cut it off at the root in mourning, at the sight of how few dwarves had survived. He remembered winters where the snows of Ered Luin were too high to travel the roads and they had dwelt in cramped quarters watching their food stores dwindle. He snorted. “Rest and mourning I have had in plenty, Tharkûn.”

Gandalf sat back in his chair. “Then tell me."

Thorin opened his mouth to protest, to say what little purpose he saw in revisiting years of suffering better left to the past. Yet the exhaustion returned like a wave, washing over that brief flicker of irritation, of rebellion. What other choice did he have? And so instead, he took a deep breath, and began to speak of cold days, of dark days, of the smell of smoke and of gnawing hunger on a lonely road.

* * *

 

Days passed, and Thorin still did not understand the point of these exercises. He did not feel any better the next day for having spoken to Gandalf, and the fog was just as thick as he struggled to focus on the words of his advisors and supplicants. Yet Gandalf was still there at the end of each day, waiting in his quarters to hear more of Thorin’s life. At first, he thought to hide certain events from the meddling wizard, but often as not Gandalf seemed remarkably informed on them anyway, and would prompt Thorin for the details he had missed.

The distant past Thorin recounted in flat, neutral tones, as if relating the life of another. The days of exile upon the road, the decision to fight at Azanulbizar and how all had supported his grandfather’s will in the endeavor, the disaster, the deaths. He skipped quickly over his grandfather’s beheading, the disappearance of his father, finding his brother’s body on the field. All who knew of the line of Durin knew those tales.

Where Gandalf stopped him was after, when Thorin had finally brought the tattered remnants of his people to Ered Luin. “And did you not mourn there?”

“I mourned each day. There was no time to set aside,” Thorin said, with an unconscious gesture towards his beard, the shortness that indicated grief. He still had not found the resolve to grow it out again.

“Never, truly? Yet you did eventually prosper, and your nephews grew. Could not some time have been found for you to relinquish the burdens of your exile? Even your grandfather had his aides when ruling Erebor.”

“Because the sickness was slowly taking his mind,” Thorin retorted.

“And before. Thorin, I am trying to understand the fire that burns within your heart, so that I may better understand what has dampened it so.”

Thorin went silent at this, jaw clenched as he gazed up at Gandalf. Why did he waste his time here? Bilbo waited outside the door, surely anticipating for his own time to speak with Gandalf, who was his old friend as well. What use did Thorin have for the wizard, except to keep him from more important matters? He crossed his arms, lips tightening, and raised an eyebrow at Gandalf, who only sighed.

“Perhaps we may jump forward a bit. I understand all the requirements of duty and honor, my own encouragement notwithstanding, that sent you on the quest for Erebor. But why did _you_ take that road?”

“What choice did I have?” Thorin said, looking down at his crossed arms. “To languish in a pitiful shadow of Erebor’s glory, a mere dwarf lord in another clan’s city? Knowing that Smaug rested easy, a blasphemy upon the treasure of my forebears, and that even should he die there would only be vultures to pick over the corpses of my people? What choice is that?”

“There is always a choice, Thorin,” Gandalf said. “We say there is not in order to comfort ourselves in a decision already made. And there is no shame in that, if you truly believed in your heart that there was no other path you would rather take. What concerns me is this talk of ‘choice’ as you say it, for I have not yet heard why _you_ felt this was _your_ responsibility.”

“I am an heir to the throne of Durin,” Thorin reminded him, bewildered that so obvious a fact needed restating to one who had never let him forget it during their journey.

“Yes, I hear much talk of who you are, and what you represent. But did you wish to return to Erebor, Thorin? When you set out from Ered Luin, but also later, when the door opened and you saw the extent of the damage, your kin lying slain within the halls and the great works so ravaged by the dragon, did you still wish it? To return home is not the same as never having left.”

The words stuck on Thorin’s tongue. _Of course_ , he had not doubted or faltered. The closer they came to Erebor was the closer he had come home…

But then he had opened the hidden door, and the stench of decay had wafted up like faded perfume, intermingling with the familiar smells of Erebor. It had tantalized him, enfolding him in its embrace as he looked out over the Long Lake and known Bilbo was inside the mountain, when he felt the first rumble of the beast beneath his feet and the world had become a haze of confusion and fear as the dragon sickness sunk its claws into him.

There had been freedom in throwing away his crown, in bursting forth from the mountain to fight at Dáin’s side, finally putting the pale demon that haunted their line into his grave.

“What did it matter if I wished it?” Thorin said, his voice hoarse. “Erebor is our home, and we may not abandon it.”

“But what would you do, Thorin, if you had no such chains to bind you? Where is _your_ home?”

_Hands clutching his, begging him to stay, feathered wings rising and falling against the sunlit clouds over a cascade of ice. A green door, on a green hill and the sound of laughter within._

Thorin jerked to his feet, the chair stuttering on the floor behind him as he lowered his head and gestured to the door.

“I believe we are finished for the evening,” he said. No further pleasantries or thanks, but Gandalf did not seem to need them. He only rose, gray robes sweeping the floor as he inclined his head to Thorin and shut the door behind him.

Only then as Thorin sat again, swiping a shaking hand over his face as he fought to collect himself, did he feel the dampness there.


	2. Chapter 2

The day’s meetings had gone longer than expected, and weighed down by guilt at his many absences, Thorin made no attempt to cut them short, even while his vision wavered and the words of the emissaries seemed to echo in his ears.

It took most of the walk back to his quarters to feel the beginnings of the lethargy fade from his mind, awareness just beginning to sharpen when he reached for the handle of the door, and heard voices within.

“And in all those years he _never_ took a holiday?” Bilbo said, his tone aghast.

“I’m not sure he would know what that was if you mentioned it, the quest itself was likely the closest he had known to one since the Mountain fell,” Gandalf said archly. “I am as concerned for him now as you are, my dear Bilbo. He seems to believe he is the only one who may bear the burden of his people’s legacy. I’m not sure he knows any longer how to separate his own wishes and desires from those of his people.”

“That does sound like him,” Bilbo sighed. Thorin wondered why he sounded morose, when Thorin himself felt a surge of pride that Bilbo saw that quality in him. “Can you help him Gandalf?”

Gandalf may have begun to answer, but Thorin could not bear to hear it one way or the other, and opened the door. The two were standing beside the dining table, Bilbo looking up at Gandalf until they both turned at the sound of Thorin entering.

“You’ve learned some degree of stealth since last we traveled together,” Gandalf observed with good humor.

“A necessity when one lives with a hobbit,” Thorin said, arching an eyebrow. It seemed they all had agreed to pretend he had not been eavesdropping. What was the saying Bilbo was so fond of? That ‘no one ever liked what was overheard?’ “If one does not wish to be constantly referred to as a great tramping beast. Will you sup with us?” Thorin said, cutting straight to the point.

The court meetings had consumed the hours he and Gandalf usually spent talking before Thorin took his meal with Bilbo, and even if Gandalf’s presence could be tiresome with his riddles, Thorin would hardly wish to be the cause of chasing off Bilbo’s friend.

Bilbo and Gandalf exchanged a glance that Thorin followed, finding it far more weighted than the question deserved.

“I have in fact made arrangements to dine with Dori and Ori this evening, at their invitation,” Gandalf said. “But I might easily change those plans if there is something you wished to speak of, Thorin.”

Thorin shook his head, waving his hand in dismissal. “No. I have taken too much of your time already. We will speak again on the morrow.” He gestured towards the door in invitation and once the wizard left it was only he and Bilbo.

“Thorin…” Bilbo began, looking wretched. “I am terribly sorry if you overheard that.”

Thorin glanced at Bilbo, feeling a peculiar stillness within him as he realized Bilbo was apologizing for speaking to Gandalf behind his back about the malady, and discussingThorin’s sessions with Gandalf, words that might indeed have been spoken with the expectation of privacy. Yet he found no anger within himself at the thought. Perhaps because he had never truly expected Gandalf to keep his confidence, for wizards would do what they pleased, and he may only trust Gandalf with the discretion not to do lasting harm to Erebor.

Or perhaps because it was a personal matter, and Bilbo in his mind had long since become part of that inner sphere of self. For Gandalf to confide Thorin’s secrets to Bilbo was indeed no different in his mind than telling Thorin himself.

“There is nothing to apologize for,” Thorin said, stepping in closer towards Bilbo, but Bilbo backed away, expression conflicted. The hand he had unconsciously begun to reach towards Bilbo fell back to his side.

“It’s only… I know there is very little I can offer, Thorin, and I would understand if you saw it as meddling. But if there’s anything, anything at all that I can do…” Bilbo stopped himself, pursing his lips in a self-deprecating half smile. He looked down, shrugged as if at his own foolishness, and back up. “You know, forget I said it. You already know that I’m here if you should need me, I don't wish to be a bother.”

Thorin frowned, trying to process Bilbo’s words, and when Bilbo looked away again he stepped inside his guard, clasping his hands to Bilbo’s bare jawline as he brought up his face and kissed him. Bilbo stiffened, and then relaxed, his breath huffing against Thorin’s lips as he tilted his head back to meet Thorin in the middle.

“How can you say that?” Thorin growled, voice hoarse when they broke apart. He closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead against Bilbo’s. “I am _here_ , Bilbo. In that, nothing has changed. That I am here at all is because of you, for that debt you could claim my life if you wished. _Shhh_ ,” he said, interrupting Bilbo as he felt him start at that, knowing how his burglar was always so alarmed by such statements of truth. “You have all that is mine to give, and I am blessed beyond any measure to have you by my side. You are not meddling, and you are never a burden. Never doubt that, and never fear again that I will place blame on you for trying to help me.”

Bilbo swallowed, overwhelmed, and then tilted his chin up to place a quick peck on Thorin’s lips.

“Still, it was unfair of us and poorly done, Thorin,” Bilbo said earnestly. “Just because we’re worried, we should not treat you like a child, or sneak about behind your back. I want you to know that we’re doing all we can to relieve the burden on you. Erebor is functioning as normal, and…”

Thorin placed a finger over Bilbo’s mouth, silencing him. Once quiet, he brushed his thumb over Bilbo’s lips and down, trailing the back of his fingers against his cheek. “Thank you,” Thorin said, looking down into Bilbo’s eyes. “But I have spoken enough of Erebor and this malady for the night. Did we not agree that in our quarters we are to shed all such concerns?”

“Yes, but we’re not very good at it,” Bilbo snorted.

The corner of Thorin’s lips turned up slightly in acknowledgment. Then he leaned in, placing a kiss where his fingers had just traced. “Perhaps you were both right, that I spend too little time on my own desires.”

“So you heard that part too,” Bilbo said glumly.

“Hmm. And I should like to remedy it,” Thorin said, but at Bilbo’s skeptical look he sighed. “Bilbo, trust that at least in you, my interest has not diminished and never will. The mountain has stolen much of our time, and now this, but I would not want you to feel any more neglected than duty requires.”

“Neglected? Of all the nonsense—” Bilbo said, only to be cut off as Thorin captured his lips again, this time adding heat and a gentle, questioning nudge towards the bed. Bilbo rocked on his heels, more from the nudge than resistance, then there were teeth nibbling at Thorin’s lower lip and he was being pulled along with arms twining up around his shoulders.

They broke apart only long enough for Bilbo to scoot onto the bed and Thorin to savagely kick away his boots before they found one another again, Thorin’s hair falling around them, blocking away the world as he hovered above Bilbo, before brushing his hair aside and lowering himself to suck at Bilbo’s throat, to untuck his shirt at the waist and run a hand along the smoothness of his stomach.

Here at least the grayness of the world was consumed by warmth, by focus, and Thorin was even able to forget the morass of his days as whatever had tightened his body as if against a blow unlocked within him. Here he was alive.

There was the usual fumbling as Bilbo broke away panting, wrenching off his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt with little mind for the buttons while Thorin did the same with the more complicated dwarven layers. He did not undress entirely, there wasn’t time and Bilbo gave a snort of annoyance at this when he was entirely undressed and Thorin was still only down to his trousers, and socks, but Thorin pushed him back onto the bed, his body braced above Bilbo’s, sheltering him. Then he was slipping downward, peppering kisses along Bilbo’s chest and belly, rubbing his sides with callused hands.

It felt good to take action, to know what he wanted most, and to give all he could without reservation. Bilbo was already half-stirred with interest when Thorin edged lower down and took him in his mouth. The scent of his musk, the heat of his body and the little gasp Bilbo gave as Thorin’s lips closed around him and his tongue flickered along the underside all came together as a balm to Thorin’s mind. Bliss closed his eyes as he took Bilbo deep, bracing himself with one forearm, the fingers clutching at Bilbo’s hip, digging in and massaging his backside, while his other hand braced at the bottom of Bilbo’s cock. His lips touched his hand, slicking his fingers with saliva as he worked. His focus was single-minded, as it seemed so little was in these days since he had even been healed enough from his wounds to take such actions with his beloved.

Thorin tasted the first surges of pre-come, heard Bilbo’s breaths turn deeper and faster, and then he was entwining his fingers in Thorin’s hair, brushing it away so that he could watch. Thorin met his gaze through his lashes, taking the opportunity to press his tongue to the underside just for the pleasure of watching Bilbo’s throat work as he fell back again with a groan. Perhaps failing to remove his own trousers had been a miscalculation, as they grew uncomfortably tight. His leg slid up the bed, to brace himself, but the movement ground his member into the sheets and a moan of his own joined the sound of Bilbo’s, muffled by his cock.

“Thorin, yes, that, do that… _oh_ ,” Bilbo said, words becoming garbled as Thorin felt the surge, knew he was driving Bilbo wild. “ _Love you, Thorin, love you. Yes that, oh that, don’t stop.”_

Thorin moaned at his words, and the vibration dragged a whimper from Bilbo, but it could not be helped as the outpouring sent a shiver down Thorin’s spine that went straight to his loins. Hearing Bilbo come apart beneath him, with words too overwhelmed by passion to be false, was its own drug.

Bilbo was a conscientious lover, not bucking into Thorin’s mouth, but in that moment Thorin would have him do so, and he pulled off slightly, slackening his lips so that Bilbo whined beneath him and thrust up, his fingers curling in the bedspread, too far gone to do anything but give in to his own desire. Thorin took him, feeling the heat crackling as if from Bilbo’s skin across to his own, as if he could banish the gray just by capturing the light that came naturally from his lover, and that passion drove him to whine, and cry out and whisper nonsense endearments to Thorin until he shuddered, one hand scraping his nails across Thorin’s scalp, and came, shivering through the waves of aftershocks.

Thorin pulled away panting, a new haze descended over his eyes, his blood hot. Bilbo lay supine beneath him, his chest heaving as his throat worked, a light sheen of sweat at his forehead and clinging to his curls. Just the sight of him so wrecked was enough to make Thorin’s erection ache. He wanted to take him, or be taken, it was all one in Thorin’s head but he knew that he _wanted_ and that was its own welcome change, burning away the cotton wool of nothingness that had swallowed him.

But if he did not want to come then and there at the sight, he would need to gather himself. He took the opportunity of Bilbo’s daze to shuck his trousers, cock bobbing free and went to the basin wash his mouth with water so that when he curled up beside Bilbo the hobbit entwined around him like a creeping vine, pressing open-mouthed kisses of thanks along Thorin’s throat stopping at his lips. Thorin hummed a deep, throaty noise and nuzzled into Bilbo’s curls, pressing his cock to his belly in reminder of his own state.

“Yes, yes, I assure you I haven’t forgotten,” Bilbo huffed against him, ducking down to press his tongue against Thorin’s nipple, sending new jolts of electricity over his skin as Bilbo braced himself up on his elbow, licking and sucking along Thorin’s chest as his fingertips trailed along his hip. “What would you like?”

Thorin’s breath hitched, images flooding his head, of taking Bilbo, of letting Bilbo take him, and warm lips wrapped around his cock in a mirror of what he had just done for Bilbo, but rising from all of those were the words he spoke. “Touch me.”

“I think I already have that covered,” Bilbo joked, running the flat of his hand along Thorin’s flank. But Thorin’s hand rose, pressing against Bilbo’s chest above his heart, trailing down, and he met Bilbo’s eyes.

“Ah,” Bilbo said, understanding. Then gently he began to rub his hand in slow circles across Thorin’s side, before running them lower. Here and there he added the edge of his nails and it made Thorin shiver as Bilbo reached down and closed his hand around Thorin’s cock. Thorin sighed at the contact, but Bilbo did not stop there. His other hand traveled to Thorin’s face, trailing through Thorin’s beard and guiding him forward for a kiss. He edged closer, so they were chest to chest, his hand all the while working a slow and lazy motion that only gradually gathered speed. Thorin shuddered, and shivered as the heat in his groin began to spread to the rest of his body and at each point of contact with Bilbo was like liquid honey pouring through his veins at the sweetness. The world narrowed to the scent of him, the taste of his lips and the inexorable motion along his cock that edged him closer, dragged faint whimpers from his lips into Bilbo’s mouth.

To be touched, that was surely a pleasure that had fallen along the wayside in their exile. Always his family was there, and their love never wavered even when sorely tested by their trials. But there was so little time, the thought of having any to spare for a companion of his own, one outside his family and responsibilities, was unthinkable, and so Thorin had always remained separate and aloof.

There was never anyone there skin to skin, the many layers of cloth and armor did not warm an empty bed and it was a lack he grew accustomed to, like a half-empty belly.

His first touches with Bilbo had not broached that line, falling under the familiar category of touch between companions and shield brothers. It was not until after the battle, when the last touch between them was Bilbo’s hand grasping at his own, begging him back from the edge, that the wall had cracked. They had sat together at his sickbed after, and known without speaking that somehow they had ended up on the other side of it, with no knowledge of where to go next except that they could not go back. That Bilbo was within his very self now, on the other side of the armor, the robes, and the crown, and there he had stayed ever since.

Now Thorin wanted nothing more than to feel him skin to skin even as another part of him wanted more than that and he thrust into Bilbo’s fist. He was panting open-mouthed against Bilbo’s lips, eyelids fluttering as surges of pleasure radiated upward, drawing whimpers as he pressed up so close to Bilbo that it was a wonder he could move his hand between them at all. His other was traveling around Thorin’s skin, skimming his shoulders, his arms, and sides, stopping to thumb at his nipples so that Thorin hissed and cursed, biting at Bilbo’s lips in retaliation.  There was no haze, no distraction and the world sharp and clear, consumed by Bilbo’s touch. No weight of dread in his stomach to drag him down he finally allowed himself to be lost in the feeling of it, muscles easing and he twined his legs through Bilbo’s as the speed became too much, the pleasure too much. His touch alone was maddening and Thorin thrust mindlessly into his hand, begging for more with kisses and whines. Bilbo’s hands were everything and his pleasure sparked behind his eyes, mind going gloriously blank.

He came, spilling between them with a full-body shudder and a final, hard kiss to Bilbo’s lips before he had to break away just to _breathe_.

“Well,” Bilbo said sometime later as they lay side by side. Thorin’s sweat cooled on his skin and he stared blearily at the ceiling, enjoying the glow, legs still intertwined with Bilbo’s. “Now I’m very glad we took supper alone tonight.”

Thorin snorted and sat up, grabbing a towel from the nightstand and beginning to dry himself, before offering it to Bilbo as well. “I was beginning to think between all of our visitors we would never have a moment’s peace again.”

“Well, I wouldn’t presume to chase them out just so I could have you…”

Thorin leaned over, pressing a kiss to Bilbo’s lips, murmuring against them, “By all means, presume away.”

 

* * *

 

They took their supper after that, and went early to bed (if not, perhaps, to sleep) and whatever alchemy this combination had worked, Thorin felt much better for it the next morning. The day’s tasks flew by, such that with the reduced workload he found himself free some hours sooner than expected, and this time went early to seek out Gandalf.

He could not rule out the possibility that Gandalf was working some magic of his own under the guise of their discussions, and buoyed by the easy day, Thorin was eager to do whatever was in his power to make such days a more common occurrence.

“Well then, in honor of your good mood I should hate to drag us down to gloomier topics,” Gandalf said. He had just finished the laborious task of cleaning out his pipe and now began to fill it. The sight made Thorin pat his breast pocket for his own, and indeed it was a habit that had slipped his mind of late, along with many other small enjoyments such as light sparring with Dwalin, or a flagon of ale with the other members of the Company. All had been subsumed in the state dinners, or other requirements of his station that meant even his own diversions must serve some dual purpose. Only the privacy of his quarters with Bilbo was sacred in that respect. “I was wondering if you might talk a little bit about the day you reclaimed Erebor.”

Thorin froze, hand over his pocket where he’d found his pipe, jerking himself back into motion only when he realized how cowardly he must appear. “I thought you wished to stay away from ‘gloomier’ topics. The day we entered the Mountain was hardly one of more than fleeting triumph, as you may recall,” he said bitterly. He had his pipe out now and in his hands, but they were still, taking no further action towards filling or smoking it. He suddenly no longer felt the desire.

Gandalf snorted. “Not the day you entered the Mountain, the day you _reclaimed_ it. On the day of the battle, you were able to look down from the Ravenhill as the armies of Azog were put to rout, and know that Erebor was once more in the hands of your people.”

Thorin went quiet at this. There had indeed been a moment, alone at the top of the world, looking down to his city. His own blood soaking through his armor, squelching in his boot, and blurring his vision. But all of that had fallen away as he walked from Azog’s corpse to the edge of the falls, looking down from ice that glowed like silver glass, down to the dark stone gates, and the armies in flight. All time had frozen in that moment, the loss of blood making his body feel lighter than air, the cold a burn in his failing lungs and he had known _triumph_. He had felt as Durin must have at the dawning of the world.

None of it had seemed real: breaking free of the illness, the desperate battle, standing surrounded by blazing white, looking down on his home for the first time since he had been cured, since the dragon had perished.

He had felt whole. All those years, every step striving towards this moment, this goal, finally consummated. He had not expected to survive this moment, it had never factored into his reasoning, and knowing he was dying had felt right. His burdens were gone, his task complete. It was the end of the long road that began the day the city fell, renewed when he lost his grandfather, his father. He had fulfilled his silent oath to them. It was done.

It was not until hours later when he came awake in his sickbed, in those few moments of silence while Bilbo yet dozed at his elbow, not yet woken by Thorin’s stirring, when it had all come crashing down on him. When pain no longer masked by adrenaline had seared every inch of his body until his very teeth ached. When he had looked at the cloth ceiling of the healer’s tent and wondered: _what now?_

Rule Erebor, of course, even though he had cast away the crown and found cleansing in that. He had gone out to fight as only a son of Durin, not as a king or heir. He had done all that must be done for those identities, and he thought perhaps to have earned some respite. But there was the city, and here he was, and all yet hailed him as king. No one seemed concerned over the dragon sickness, save for some shadowed, doubting looks from Bard and the usual cold venom of Thranduil. Apparently, the Company had defended Thorin while he was unconscious, telling the tale of how he had fought his illness and won, so that no excuse could be made of his unfitness to rule.

Almost as soon as Thorin could remain awake more than a few hours at a time, the work had begun. Letters flying back and forth by raven to Ered Luin with questions that needed answering, a battlefield to clear, negotiations for how to divide and transport the gold to those who had earned it, particularly those treasures of Dale looted by Smaug and how they were to be counted as far as Lake-town’s compensation for the dragon’s attack.

He had thrown himself into the work, for what else could he do? He was king, had always wished to _be_ king, and must now face the reality of it. It was no different than negotiations with the guilds of Ered Luin, or so he told himself, except every day the weariness of his injuries weighed at his body, and the whirling thoughts of the city his mind. At least under dragon sickness the idea of kingship had been a joy: a seat of unequaled power, all his worth based upon the gold over which he was sole lord and master.

Being a true king was not nearly so neat a concept. The gold was not his, but rather all of Erebor’s, and similarly being lord of that place meant that all had a claim upon his time. Bilbo was a silent presence by his side, placing a hand over his at quiet moments when he needed it most, shooing petitioners out of Thorin’s sick room at the close of day. It was he who first suggested that some sort of screening process was necessary, that Thorin could not be expected to have the answer to every question, in particular now with so many dwarves within the Mountain. Some semblance of bureaucracy would need to be assembled, but even that ran counter to the dwarven traditions, for it should have been the king who appointed each advisor and mining overseer personally, which alone could be a process of years.

Thorin wished his grandfather were there, so that he may ask him how he had managed all those years before, fleeing the dragon attack on the Grey Mountains and establishing the wealthiest kingdom of the Third Age in a single lifetime. He wished his father were there, if only to tell him he was not mad for feeling tired, and fearing he would never be enough for his home. Balin tried, but ultimately he too was a subject, and his hours were burdened with every task that Thorin had not the time to take.

“I felt complete, that day,” Thorin said. He traced the carved ridges of his pipe with his thumbnail. “It was only after that I felt…lost.”

“Lost?” Gandalf said, prompting Thorin to go further. Thorin glanced at him, and more out of habit than interest lit the pipe and used the time it took to catch alight to gather his thoughts, and determined which he felt comfortable sharing with the wizard.

“It has been many years since I first thought to take back Erebor,” Thorin said, his voice low. “And many times the thought fell by the wayside. Indeed, when I met you I had begun to believe those who said it was a fool’s errand, just as many called the search for my father such. I had grown accustomed to the idea. It was clear that any plan to face the dragon would result in many deaths, mine the most likely of all.” He looked to the door, wondering if he might still walk out the way he came, find Bilbo and spend some few hours on the battlements, in the sunlight, and recover the mood that had been lost. Yet it suddenly seemed a great deal of effort to even leave his chair, and so he continued. “None of my plans stretched far beyond the death of the dragon itself, or the vague understanding that I must rule wisely, as my grandfather had. Even that seemed arrogance to consider. In his place, fleeing dragon fire as he had, I only managed to build a poor shadow of his kingdom. A hovel compared to a palace.”

“And yet Thrór was never able to reclaim his lost home in the Grey Mountains, or Erebor for that matter, and you have now accomplished such great deeds that he could not,” Gandalf said, tilting his head to the side, searching Thorin’s face. “I do not say this to disrespect his memory, but merely to offer perspective.”

Thorin grimaced. “It does not diminish the fact that I thought I was ready for this responsibility when I was not. I made no plans, did not look beyond my own two feet to the path ahead. I feared--” he stopped, feeling liking a miner who, digging through soft stone, suddenly stumbles upon a hidden snag, some knotted vein that stops his pickaxe and drags free a cascade of broken stone.

“Yes?”

“I feared… that if I dared imagine it, even for a moment, I would lose what drive I had. Become lost in delusions and daydreams of kingship, rather than acknowledging the simple fact that there would be no glory, no comfort, until the dragon was dead, and that was an impossible task. Only if I accomplished it might I consider the future, if there was even one to be had, when it was far more likely that I would fall in the attempt.”

Thorin felt lighter for saying it, and then a jolt of unreality at his words, at the table beneath his hands and the stone beneath his feet. To be speaking to Gandalf here in his quarters in Erebor when less than two years before was their 'chance meeting' in Bree, with the Mountain half a world away. They had spoken too of a burglar, and it seemed odd to Thorin to realize that was the first mention he’d ever heard of Bilbo, though he could not have known what it would lead to at the time.

“So, here we are,” Gandalf said, spreading his time-worn hands. “This future you never thought to reach. What is your plan now, Thorin Oakenshield?”

“To see the kingdom restored. To rule wisely and fairly. To prepare my sister’s-sons to follow after,” Thorin said, each point coming easily to mind as if it was a lesson memorized by rote.

“Noble goals, to be sure, but perhaps a bit vague? They certainly lack the iron of ‘slay a dragon’ and ‘take back your homeland,’” Gandalf said, arching one bushy eyebrow. “Not to mention they offer no clear indication of when you have succeeded. Surely one day you may look back and see that you have accomplished these, but they lack a singular point of victory. Ruling wisely and fairly is a daily task, as is restoring Erebor to its former glory. Training your heirs, well, will they ever truly be ready? You yourself were barely more than a youth when you assumed command, much younger than they, and had much less preparation than you have already given Fíli.”

“So are you saying I am unable to accomplish these things?” Thorin retorted, feeling the sting of those words, feeling them strike far closer to home than he would ever admit for what should have been an obvious discussion.

“Save me from— I am _saying_ that you could very well say right now that you have accomplished all of these things. Erebor is a functioning kingdom again, there are none in these halls who speak poorly of you, but all know you have given your life and more to see them home. Your nephew is far less hesitant than you to seek aid where he needs it from those wiser and older than himself, yet you have set yourself an impossible task, Thorin. One that has no end goal and from what I know of your personality, such vagaries do not suit you. You are a man of action.”

“We may not all choose a life best suited to us, but only accept what we are given,” Thorin snapped. “How might I now, after all this, simply walk away from my responsibilities?”

“I have pushed you hard along this path, Thorin, harder than any other save perhaps yourself, and not always for selfless motives. So trust me when I say that you have done everything and more that could be expected of you. You are allowed to enjoy the fruits of your labor, as much as you would allow any member of the Company to enjoy them if they chose tomorrow to take their share of the treasure and go.”

“No, in that you are wrong.” His pipe was threatening to go cold in his hand, and Thorin inhaled through it to bring the coals back to life. They flickered dully. “There is no such choice, not for me.”


	3. Chapter 3

It was nearing spring, a fact occasionally forgotten inside the Mountain, and the sun was still above the horizon when Thorin parted from Gandalf. It seemed they had reached an impasse, with Gandalf asking Thorin to consider a path he could never truly take, and so he sent a message to Bilbo asking if he would join him up at the ramparts--a spot significantly higher than their makeshift wall that once blocked the gate--and so afforded a better view of the surrounding region.

The sun was pleasant enough on Thorin’s skin, the pale light of spring shading to summer’s gold on one of those rare, clear days so far north. There was still snow covering most of the countryside and the light reflected upward, bright enough to blind had he come at midday. The shadows were long now, but it was still hours yet until nightfall, and so Thorin closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth and unusual peace, more or less resigned that his missive had caught Bilbo at a bad time, when he heard the door behind him swing open.

“Thorin.” He turned, and saw Fíli closing the heavy iron door shut behind him.

“Fíli?” Thorin said, and then with more certainty. “You should be overseeing the petty court.”

“Some things are more important,” Fíli said with a shrug, and took a space beside Thorin on the parapet.

Any chastisement Thorin may have leveled at him for shirking his duties died on his lips at the hypocrisy of such words. Instead he nodded wearily, and looked back out over the surrounding lands.

“Bilbo sent me,” Fíli said after a moment. “He’s occupied with the Mirkwood ambassador, along with Kíli. Said you might appreciate the company.”

Thorin did, even as he questioned it. He saw little of his nephew outside of the governing of Erebor, or the few occasions when Fíli brought questions to him in private. Growing fewer, he realized; it had been some time since Fíli had called upon him for advice at all. Perhaps he was simply more comfortable in his role now. Or perhaps Thorin had grown more obvious in his failures as an advisor.

“I’m not very good at it, this elvish thing, pretending not to see what’s right in front of me,” Fíli said conversationally and Thorin stiffened. “I gather it was quite common in great-grandfather’s days, because no one wanted to challenge the king. I can understand that. Last time, Dwalin and I had to flip for it.”

Thorin’s brow furrowed. His stomach had gone cold and leaden. He remembered the dragon sickness, though the memory as ever was hazy. Dwalin’s face swam into focus in his mind, pleading. “Which of you won?” Thorin murmured.

Fíli shrugged, not answering. His eyes were narrowed with concern as he studied Thorin. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong, Thorin?”

There it was: the question he had feared for months, as much as he had feared the child-like panic it sent through him that left him cringing inside. He swallowed it back. “There is nothing.”

Perhaps he had answered too fast, or perhaps in his stupor he had missed just how much Fíli had grown. His posture did not change, nor did the furrowed concern of his brow. The silence stretched, inviting Thorin to elaborate, and if that was not the last thing he wanted to do, then it was very close to it. “Nothing that need concern you. The matter is well in hand.”

“Then something is the matter?” Fíli said. Once, he would have pounced upon the opening Thorin provided like an overeager puppy. Now his words were smooth and steady, a fluid block that brought him within Thorin’s guard. He was learning to be a diplomat, and it showed. “Thorin, I’m not asking how this affects the kingdom. I’m asking how you feel. I know there are many burdens on you that I cannot understand, but I would like to try.”

An answer, a  _true_ answer, built inside Thorin. Like water behind a dam, he could feel all that he had not said to Gandalf, everything that burned within him from shame, every slick and slimy thought, unworthy of a king of Erebor, unworthy of a dwarf: that he was lost. That these tasks were simple and thus infuriating, that he _knew_ how to do his work and yet could not bear to even try. That he would rather face a dragon again, that he would rather lead their people through the exile, or that Azog’s blade had slid home a few inches to the left, and so allowed him to fall as a warrior, in defense of his home. That he wanted to fall to his knees and weep and yet had spent all his tears long ago on the fall of his home, on his people, on his brother, and father, and grandfather. On all the loved ones he had lost, and so it felt shameful to wail over his own pathetic inability to handle all that had been left on his shoulders. Little things, tiny pebbles of mundane matters that weighted upon him like an avalanche. That built and built until he thought it would burst from his skull, that it would light his flesh on fire. Yet it all stopped at the wall of his teeth, swallowed back, as if he were a hollow statue, a shell of armor around his being that could not be passed.

Thorin remained silent, and when part of him wished that at least his plea might show in his eyes, he closed them, and that the slump of his shoulders would shout his cries, he straightened them.

He was frozen. Unable to go forward or back, only able to stand stupidly, feeling Fíli’s eyes bore into him like a knife being slowly pressed into his skin. Unable to move from it because it was family, his kin and his responsibility. He would not shed them onto Fíli’s shoulders. This was not the wake of Azanulbizar, and he was not dead. One as young as Fíli did not need to take on these burdens as Thorin once had. It did not matter that he felt he was being crushed beneath them, the weight of the Mountain pressing upon him until he was ground to dust. He breathed, because he felt there was nothing else he could do, with the words trapped behind his teeth and the weight of it all pressing down around him, a vise and prison all at once. Quiet for too long, but then, what else had he been of late?

A weight settled on his shoulders. Not the imaginary one that so dragged him down, or the suffocating clamp of panic and anger that closed off his chest. Thorin’s brow furrowed, and he opened his eyes to see Fíli pressing their foreheads together, his arms wrapped around Thorin’s shoulder.

“I’m here, Uncle. Whatever it is, you don’t have to tell me, you don’t have to explain. Just know that I’m here, and you are not alone in this,” Fíli’s voice was hushed but earnest. A quiet descended that was more than the ceasing of the wind that blew over the mountainside, it was a stillness in his mind, a clearing of the torrent of self-recrimination, the endless noise of all that he should do but could not find the strength within himself to accomplish. Like dark clouds parting to reveal a single star, it was alright to simply _be_ for a moment.

“Thank you,” Thorin murmured, and it was all that could be said.

* * *

“Did you have a nice talk with Fíli?” Bilbo said that evening as they lingered over the final scraps of their dinner of fish from the Long Lake and some of the early spring potatoes. Bilbo would have supper again later, and another snack if they stayed up late, but for Thorin’s part he found himself full. His appetite was lesser of late, a change Thorin attributed to the lack of physical activity. A warrior needed larger meals to stay strong, while he barely moved outside of his walks to and from the throne room, or up the stairs to the parapet. He did not think much on just how much lesser it was, with only a few bites enough to ward off the edges of hunger, the rest of his belly filled with a sharp, anxious feeling like a swallowed cry building in the back of his throat. He still dutifully finished what he could, remembering as if through a haze of smoke the last time he lacked an appetite, under the dragon sickness. He did not wish to make Bilbo worry.

“Indeed, though not one I was expecting,” Thorin said, unable to keep the iron entirely from his voice at being so ambushed. “He should not have felt the need to abandon his duties for my sake.”

Bilbo snorted. “His ‘duties’? Thorin, your nephews love you like a father. Give them a chance to show it from time to time.”

“I’m not their father,” Thorin reminded him. “Víli was a good and noble dwarf, who fell bravely. It is not my place to take his in their hearts.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that many times before, and you’re dodging the issue,” Bilbo said, gesturing at Thorin with his fork. “You cannot deny that they care about you immensely. They’ve proved it time and time again, never mind by coming on the Quest in the first place.”

“That was their duty as princes, which they performed as heroes,” Thorin said, dropping his gaze to his meal as he picked it over. He had no illusions of the grief he had brought to his nephews, nearly costing them their lives. Fíli’s broken legs from the fall had left him bedridden for months, and Thorin had not yet asked Kíli if he yet forgave him, if he dared, for his refusal to join the battle under the illness. He was immensely proud of them, but that pride was tinged with shame for how they aided him now in his helplessness. “Why, just today Fíli… what is it?”

Bilbo was staring at him, his fork held loosely in his hand, teetering from fingers gone slack.

“Are you completely serious? You _really_ think they only came out of duty?” Bilbo’s gaze was unusually intent for a question with so obvious an answer.

“Also courage and honor. Do not misunderstand me, I would never speak to diminish their deeds,” Thorin said, pushing the remains of his meal around his plate as he spoke. “They came for more than the promise of reward, and I would not have faulted them or any of the Company had it been their only cause. For some of them, I’m sure it was.”

Except Bilbo was studying Thorin, eyes narrowed then growing wide as he settled back in his chair. “Good gracious, you believe that. You really do.”

Thorin frowned. “Believe what?”

“That your nephews followed you to Erebor out of… obligation, or fealty, or any of that nonsense,” Bilbo exclaimed. “Thorin, I know for a fact that every dwarf in this Company came on the journey because they believed in _you,_ because they had faith in your vision, and because they _love_ you. How could you possibly…?” Bilbo mouth worked for a moment gaping like a fish, as if gasping for air. “But that’s just it, isn’t it? You think they would have followed just anyone, because of the fourteenth share.”

“Now you are the one who is being absurd,” Thorin said. He shrugged, as if to physically cast off Bilbo’s words as they clung to him, drilling within to a place he dare not acknowledge, much less entertain. “They are Sons of Durin, what mattered most was to regain the Mountain. As heir, it was my responsibility to lead them thence.”

“And they would have followed another?” Bilbo said blankly, and Thorin nodded in acknowledgement.

“Of course. If I had fallen, it would be Fíli. If I had found my father in time…” Thorin swallowed, then continued, “then it would have been him. The heir of Thrór is the only one who may inherit Erebor. That this honor fell to me is not one I take lightly, and I am grateful every day for their loyalty.”

“But the vision to do so, Thorin, the drive, all you worked and fought for!” Bilbo said. He reached across the table and seizing Thorin’s free hand in his, squeezing it as he spoke. “Don’t you see that no one else could have done that? Do you honestly think _I_ ran out of my cozy smial to follow the Heir of Durin? I didn’t even know what that _was_ at the time!”

“You are different,” Thorin said, offering a wan smile as he squeezed Bilbo’s hand back. “You have always been different; I was simply too blind to see it at first.”

Bilbo shook his head. “Not in this. Thorin, none of us came because of your birthright. We came because of _you_ , because we believe in you and…” he raised his other hand to silence Thorin before he could retort, “We still do. I hope you understand that.”

The tirade ended but Bilbo still stared at him as if at a loss, breathing heavily, before he sat back down, fidgeting, only to bounce back up immediately at the sight of Thorin’s empty plate. “I’ll do the washing up. If you’re done?”

Thorin nodded, and Bilbo took the plate, piling it on top of his own, but before he left their table he paused, putting a hand on Thorin’s shoulder. “I don’t expect an answer to any of this. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned you already knew. It would be very unfair of you to think less of the others, just as it’s quite unfair to think so much less of yourself. Just… think about it, love, will you? For me?”

He left, and when he returned he found Thorin still sitting at the table, arms folded and staring into the distance.

* * *

Thorin awoke once after they went to bed, in the middle hours of the night. With no windows, the room was too dark even for dwarven eyes, but still he stared, imagining he could make out the shape of the canopy. Thorin could hear Bilbo’s breathing beside him, and ran an idle hand over his side, feeling where Bilbo’s striped nightshirt had ridden up and tugging it back into place. Bilbo murmured, and shifted in his sleep.

So late there was not even the faintest vibration echoing from inside the mountain. Erebor was, for one of those rare moments, asleep.

Thorin breathed in, feeling the stillness, the darkness like a womb, secret and protective. No one there with him but Bilbo, no one to see his face, or wonder about his absence. It was alright to be quiet and still here.

He breathed out, letting the breath carry with it the tension of the day that was his constant companion, even when so little happened. Allowed himself to simply _be_ , not running to the next task or avoiding it. His shoulders eased and in the night it seemed his flesh had no form, that in the absence of light he may simply drift apart, become one with his homeland, silent and inseparable, never wondering, never thinking, content that there was nowhere else he would rather be…

Thorin breathed again, in and out, harder, returning to the stillness. On the exhale he kept his mind resolutely blank, staring up once again and whether his eyes were open or closed, it made no difference to the night.

* * *

“This is going nowhere,” Thorin announced. Gandalf sat across from him, expression impassive until he raised both bushy eyebrows, inviting Thorin to continue. Thorin was barely rested, for all that Bilbo had already left the bed and his side when he awoke, and late morning had been on its way to early afternoon. He had been able to meet his court over the noon meal, and pick up one of his meetings from Fíli’s schedule, even as his attention had wavered like a wheel on a poorly-made axle, and before he knew it, the time had come for yet another of these ‘sessions’ with Gandalf, as onerous a prospect as another petitioner. More so, for at least when he muddled his way through the petitioners he was accomplishing something.

“Do you feel no better for having spoken?” Gandalf said. He did not seem offended, nevertheless Thorin seethed, leaning forward in his chair.

“No, and quite the contrary, here I am at my most useless. Only yesterday I felt the weight lifted until we spoke, as you said, of _happier memories_. Memories that have brought back nothing but pain and remorse. Next why not ask me of the day the city fell, or the years of exile if that is your view of better times?” Thorin bit off.

“Would that help?” Gandalf said, utterly unperturbed and Thorin was on his feet before he realized, hands drawn to fists at his side.

“No! I have no need to remember dark days that are nearly a century in the past! I do not need to waste another hour wallowing in my failures. I am a _Son of Durin_ , and this nonsense is better left to elves!” He fairly spat the words, his throat gone curiously tight and his face hot as he raged.

“Thorin, if the matter was so easily resolved, I would simply have offered you another task to achieve and we could have put all of this behind us,” Gandalf said with damnable patience. “I am fully aware that Durin’s Folk work better with the tangible, with the rock and stone and great deeds to which you can apply your axe and your skill. Which is precisely why I fear this darkness that enshrouds you. It is no simple foe that you can vanquish with enough effort. What you face now is a culmination of the many tragedies you have faced in your long life, and may well be as difficult to defeat.”

“Yet if we can find the root of your current state of despair, we might well be able to take steps towards alleviating it. Oftentimes the source is hidden beneath many layers, many assumptions that you have piled on like stones over the years to shield yourself. What I believe we are facing now is all that pain falling upon you at once, in which case it is no wonder that you are collapsing beneath its weight. No one should have to bear a lifetime of suffering all at once, as I believe you do now.”

“But why now?” Thorin said, and did not know why his shouting had turned to a plea. “I do not have _time_ for a rebellion of my own mind against my flesh! Why must this happen _now_ , when I have a city to rebuild; when all that I have fought for is at my fingertips? My kin await my guidance, my nephews labor without my aid. Even Bilbo…” he swallowed, “even Bilbo must wonder where he lost the leader of the Company. Gandalf, you say there is a shadow upon me. If that is so, I beg you to banish it. I will go to my knees if I must, I will give you all within my power, only please, rid me of this curse!”

Gandalf’s brow furrowed, and the fact that it did so in sympathy was no comfort to the cold rush of fear that shot through Thorin’s blood at the sight. “And how would I do that, Thorin? Wipe away half your memories? Leave you a hollow shell with no recollection of the trials that have made you who you are? You could very well awaken with no memory of your life at all since the Mountain fell, or since your grandfather took ill, and where would that leave you?”

“…A child,” Thorin said, hoarse and reluctant. Or an empty shell that bore his shape but no longer his mind. A shiver of disgust ran through Thorin at the thought.

“Then you understand what I am trying to tell you. This is part of you, not simply an effect of magic that may be wished away; I cannot remove it from you in such a manner without rewriting your entire existence. There is a root to all of this, and while I cannot promise that discovering it will remove all traces, we are further now than when I first came to Erebor, and I think I’m beginning to understand enough to help you find a cure.”

The relief should not have been so searing when all Gandalf had told him was that the slog must continue. Thorin collapsed back into his seat, putting a weary hand to his forehead. “And what is that?”

Gandalf spread his hands, “It lies in the words you just spoke. When will it be time enough, Thorin? When will you afford yourself more than a few hours at the end of the day to be anything more than a son of Durin, an heir of Thrór, a king under a mountain of woes that you will never allow yourself to mourn, much less shrug from your shoulders?”

“You have said as much before, I see no progress there,” Thorin said, hand falling from his forehead so his fingers could clench at the arm of the chair.

“And yet the last time I spoke such words you fled the room. You refused to listen. I would call this progress,” Gandalf said.

“I did not _flee_ ,” Thorin snapped, irritation flickering hot as he looked up. “There was nothing further to discuss. I cannot simply cast aside my responsibilities.”

“Why not?” he said, and at Thorin’s outraged silence, Gandalf relented. “I am not saying you should do so, but indulge me for a moment. Let us play a game.”

Thorin sighed, the stiffness leaving the muscles of his jaw and shoulders. He sunk into the chair and stared up at the ceiling, before gesturing for Gandalf to continue. Gandalf bowed his head with excessive graciousness.

“It is some years hence, the number is up to you,” Gandalf said, pausing to wait for Thorin’s nod of acknowledgement. A game of pretend, then. Very well. He could not help stealing a glance at the clock on the mantelpiece, but as these sessions ended when he or Gandalf chose, there was little purpose. It had barely crawled through the first twenty minutes of their usually hour-long meetings. “And it is Fíli’s coronation day.”

Thorin blinked at this, sitting straighter in his chair. “Is this an exercise in an assumption that I am already dead?”

“Do you wish it to be?” Gandalf said, raising an eyebrow. “Do you truly wish to surrender Erebor only over your cold, dead body?”

Thorin thought about it. “No. Continue.”

“There is very little for me to add, I am not telling you a story. I am asking you to tell me yours,” Gandalf said. “It is Fíli’s coronation day. He is to become king of Erebor as your successor. Presume for a moment that this is authorized, there has been no bloody usurpation, no great tragedy. You have deemed him ready and you are still alive. The other dwarf lords have agreed that this is permissible and soon there will be a celebration which you may attend.”

Thorin snorted. “Are you harboring dreams of revolution, Gandalf? Should I be concerned?” A difficult matter to joke on, he had considered whether his lords and vassals might rise up to dethrone him. The thought was anathema amongst dwarves, yet they may have spent enough time in the world of Men for the concept to lose its foreign taste.

“My greatest concern when I’m in this room is your wellbeing,” Gandalf assured him.

Thorin noted the ambiguity of the statement, as it made no provisions for Gandalf’s murky goals _outside_ of the room, but he felt no desire to spar further. The game seemed harmless enough. Indeed, it was not unthinkable for a dwarven monarch to relinquish the throne to an heir for any number of reasons before he returned to the Halls of his Fathers. There could well be a day when Fíli would be ready and Thorin willing to abdicate in his favor. Certainly he’d already kept Bilbo far from his home in the Shire this past year. His husband might wish to return, and that was only one possibility.

Thorin closed his eyes, envisioning the cheering crowds, the air of celebration. It would be a very different coronation - the city would be entirely rebuilt by then, not half in ruins as it had been for Thorin’s. Trade would be reestablished; there would be dignitaries from across the land, just as there had been for the great festivals in his grandfather’s day.

And Thorin Oakenshield, once King of the Longbeards, where would he be? Perhaps at the right hand side of the dais as he watched Fíli place the Raven Crown upon his own head, a symbol of the rights conferred by Durin himself. Fíli would be older then, with that grace and pride Thorin had seen in his face only the day before, standing with the dignity of a king. Bilbo would be at Thorin’s side, perhaps their hands would intertwine as they watched the kingship pass to the next generation, the one Thorin had fought to see restored to their home.

Fíli was well liked, beloved in fact by the dwarves and in Dale for the aid he gave to Bard’s children when Lake-town fell. He would do well. There would be feasting that night, and song, and when the morning dawned, a new era would begin in Erebor, and Thorin would…

The breath froze in Thorin’s throat, as if he trod a solid path only to walk out onto empty air.

There would be nothing to bind him to Erebor; indeed, he would only serve as a distraction from the rightful king. Bilbo had some tasks, but most were involved in supporting Thorin’s reign, interceding where Thorin could not to resolve old grudges with Dale or Mirkwood. Fíli had no such burden, he would not need Bilbo’s aid. They would be free.

He had no idea what that meant.

Perhaps in the abstract, but when Thorin applied the idea of 'freedom' to himself, it felt like an ill-fitting coat, bunching at the shoulders, too short at the arms. What use did he have for freedom? What need did he have for it? A preposterous notion, even Bilbo had not been free in his years living in the Shire. He had been weighed down by expectations, by propriety and his peers. Thranduil was not free as the Elvenking, Bard could not leave his post. No one with so many souls relying upon them could be so careless, so unburdened.

But Bilbo had smiled when he caught up to the Company.

Bard had chosen the kingship of Dale in a way that Thorin never had the chance, and what did he care about Thranduil? The other members of the Company may indeed come and go, even with the honors he had heaped upon them. If both Fíli and Kíli told him that evening that they wished to give up their birthright, he would not begrudge them. Why could he not extend the same to himself—

Thorin sat up like a shot, eyes flying open, breath loud in his ears as he gripped the edge of the table, white-knuckled. His heart seared as if it struggled to fight free of his chest. He felt as if he had been poisoned and he freed one hand from the table’s edge to clutch at the front of his tunic.

“Thorin, are you quite alright?” Gandalf’s voice was urgent, his gray form hovering at the edge of Thorin’s blurring vision. He shook his head, still panting, still feeling a greater rush of fear than he had when facing the Pale Orc across the ice. That had been grim acceptance, rage over Fíli’s broken form on the rocks. It had been the end of a long road, while this was entirely different.

“Fine, I’m fine,” Thorin said breathlessly. The pounding in his chest was fading, washing away with the image of him and Bilbo standing at the dais, and beyond them a road that led ever on and on…

His eyes stung.

“Do you wish us to adjourn for the day? You’ve been quiet nearly half an hour, and I understand Bilbo will be returning soon…”

“No,” Thorin said gruffly. “Stay. Stay for the evening’s meal, if you wish, but I think after all this I deserve my own question.” Thorin leaned forward, elbows planted on his knees as he rubbed his hands over his face, holding them there for a long moment before letting them fall as he looked up at Gandalf. The wizard had settled back in his chair, tobacco-stained hands clasped before him. Thorin did not know what he wished to ask. Questions waited in his mind, but too many would place him in the wizard’s power should he ask them: what should he do, when would Fíli be ready, would Bilbo accept such a change? All meaningless if he could not determine the answer himself. Only then did Thorin realize what he must ask, though the wizard had given that answer once before, when Thorin had lain in a haze of aching wounds and the lingering memory of dragon sickness.

“Tell me of my father. Not with lies, or assumptions. Do not tell me you believe he would have been proud. Only his final words and deeds, Gandalf. The truth.”

Gandalf was silent a long moment after this, and when he finally spoke, Thorin listened.

* * *

It was a short tale; yet a stillness fell over the room until Bilbo arrived. His husband entered their quarters with a tentative knock, eyes widening at the sight that greeted him.

Gandalf yet remained at the table, offering Bilbo a nod of welcome, but the hobbit spared him only a perfunctory wave, for his gaze was drawn elsewhere.

Thorin stood by the fireplace, pipe in hand as he leaned against the mantle. He was humming a tune when Bilbo entered, slow as a dirge and yet familiar, the echo of a memory from long ago, and at the sound of Bilbo’s approach he looked up, and smiled.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am immensely moved and honored to say that the indomitable Sansael has created an incredible fanvid trailer for Burning Low, which you can find here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzaCuC3vlfE


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the delay, please enjoy a double-length chapter to make up for it. Also, special thanks to Indigoire and Sansael for their enormous help with beta work!

_“Thorin must not enter the mountain.”_

_A shadow rising above, an ancient evil without name that devours and consumes, letting none escape its grasp. An old hatred, an old force bent on the destruction and degradation of Durin’s Folk._

_“Tell him I love him. Can you do that, Gandalf? Tell my son that I loved him.”_

Fire crackled in the hearth and the pipe in his hand had gone cold as Thorin’s mind drifted to a broken fortress, shadows that moved, and his father’s last desperate words.

“Did you have any reason to doubt it?” Bilbo said. He sat across from Thorin in front of the fire, in one of the two plush armchairs that were the room’s concession to Hobbit living. Gandalf had left some time ago after a few murmured pleasantries, and for the past hour he and Bilbo had sat in comfortable silence, until Thorin became lost in thought.

“That my father loved me?” Thorin said, rousing from his contemplation. “No, but it has been many years. I both hoped and feared that he lived, that he may be imprisoned and suffering somewhere out of reach, but such horrors I did not suspect even in darkest watches of the night. My father was still trying to protect me, and warn me away from the dangers of the mountain, even at the heights of his own torment."

That creature had stolen Thráin from him even as the Company traveled towards the mountain, and by doing so robbed Thorin and his family of a chance to say goodbye, for his father to see their home restored, to see his grandchildren grown up, or Bilbo to meet him. That loss could never be taken back, or forgiven.

Bilbo fiddled with his pipe as he looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry you lost your father, Thorin, and under such terrible circumstances. Have you had any time to mourn?”

“Years.  Ever since he vanished from the battlefield,” Thorin said quietly, “Even when I would not give in to the assurances that he was dead, I felt his absence keenly. All those decisions to make alone, without really knowing if I did well, if I could do more…” Thorin looked up at a touch and Bilbo was taking the pipe from his slack fingers and setting it aside, clasping Thorin’s scarred hand in his soft ones.

“That’s not what I meant,” Bilbo said, and sighed. “I can’t really understand all you’ve been through, Thorin. The battles alone are quite a bit different than anything I saw as a lad. But I have also lost my parents, and… well, I think a good bit of what you saw when we met was my way of mourning them. Keeping their house in order, living the life my father would have wanted, or perhaps not, we can never really know….” Bilbo coughed, clearing his throat, eyes blinking rapidly. “I do not wish to be cruel but… Thorin, your father is dead. It’s all right to… Oh, I don’t know, be angry about it. To smash a few plates and call that Necromancer chap some unkind names. To visit your father’s grave.”

“There is no grave,” Thorin said shortly.

Bilbo rolled his eyes. “Or the memorial here in Erebor. It wasn’t just meant for the official ceremony, Thorin, it was meant to give… closure, something to remember him by. Everyone knows that funerals are only for distant friends and relatives. You can’t put a schedule on true grief.”

Thorin went quiet, then frowned with a small shrug. “I am not certain what I feel is grief. I accept that he died. I am angry that I could not save him in time. But the rest…it’s as if there is stone between myself and how it should feel, to know that he really is gone, and that I failed to stop it.”

“Like someone has bricked off a room in your house, and all you can do is sit on the other side and feel vaguely as if you should find a way to air it out again?” Bilbo said.

“Not the words I would have used,” Thorin remarked dryly. “But for the purpose of argument it will suffice.”

Bilbo clucked sympathetically. “I had that, very badly in fact, in the months after my mother died. It was quite a while before I had the heart to make a joke, or do aught but drift about in a sort of haze, feeling altogether useless. The grief hit eventually, and I had a good cry and felt better for it, but I still miss her terribly. I would have liked her to meet you, and I believe she would have liked you a great deal as well. Though my father would have been in a state to learn I’ve left Shire, and the family reputation in such tatters,” Bilbo chuckled, seeming at peace with his father’s horror.

Thorin regarded Bilbo, and it occurred to him that he had never really asked much after Bilbo’s family, even during the weeks on his sickbed when they had spent so much time with their heads inclined together, speaking of everything and nothing, as if to make up for all the years they so easily might not have had.

Perhaps it was from a sense of privacy. Thorin’s own family was there, or they were not. They could either speak freely for themselves or the memory of loss was too near to discuss with any degree of calm. Lost family could only be raged over, or searched for. The funerals of Durin’s Folk did not linger overlong on quiet mourning and soft conversations in darkened rooms. Rousing songs to the glorious dead, weeping into mugs of beer, that was the dwarven way to celebrate those lost honorably, and of that Bilbo had never partaken. A peculiarity of his people, a quiet difference from Thorin’s life that he had never thought to question or pursue.

Thorin wondered if he should be ashamed of that, but even that pang lay on the other side of the wall in his heart, a sort of distant pain only viewed from afar.

“You said you felt angry, that’s something,” Bilbo observed, breaking Thorin from his reverie. “I was angry too, but it was far less reasonable. Who, indeed, was there to be angry with? Time, old age? I could no more be angry with them for my parents’ death than I can be with the sun rising, or the moon going through his cycles. Of course, that didn’t help at all, so I was only sullen, snapping with a sort of unguided petulance at any interruption. I think I would have quite liked an enemy to,” Bilbo made a jabbing motion, as if skewering an invisible foe with Sting. “Something fittingly ugly that would bleed in a satisfactory manner. Yes, that would have hit the spot.”

“Haven’t you grown bloody-minded?” Thorin smiled wanly. “I have never heard you say anything so dwarvish.”

“I’m afraid I’m surrounded by terrible influences,” Bilbo laughed. “There’s little to be done for it, I’m horribly content and that’s unlikely to change.” Though it was not the first time Bilbo had insisted so, it still settled as a warm weight in Thorin’s heart to hear such assurances.

Thorin had seen only glimpses of Bilbo while he was in Bag End, and had made little note of his surroundings at the time, too preoccupied with other matters. Had there been a sadness about the place? The picture of Bilbo’s parents over the mantle— which he had only taken for honoring one’s ancestors as he smoked his pipe and sang of Erebor— took on a new cast. Had it been a house of mourning, had Bilbo only shaken off his grief that day, when he dashed after the Company? Would perhaps travel of another sort cheer him now…?

But no, that was only his own selfishness speaking.

“You probably have no mystery of who to blame,” Bilbo said.

“Thranduil is the only other that yet lives,” Thorin said, and at this Bilbo started, then looked rueful at himself for doing so. “For the orcs who stole my father from the battlefield would have had to pass through the Greenwood to reach Dol Guldur, and he did not lift a finger against a war party crossing his territory. Azog is,” Thorin gestured, a slicing, final motion, “dead. There is only myself to blame then, that he was taken defending me.”

Bilbo stared. “But you cannot possibly blame yourself… Oh never mind, this is you after all.” Thorin shot him a look, but Bilbo shrugged, and Thorin could not exactly contradict him.

“He thought to challenge Azog alone, so that I would not have to,” Thorin explained. “Frerin’s death was fresh in both our hearts. I think he hoped to spare me the Defiler’s wrath. But all that meant was that I fought him alone.” Alone, with only a broken branch for a shield. Alone to become a legend without a father. Thorin shook his head and sighed. “But, I think my father would have thanked you.”

“For what?” Bilbo said.

“Many things, but the first would be for challenging Azog after the Goblin Tunnels, protecting me when I was laid low.”

“Well, it’s what anyone would have done,” Bilbo scoffed.

“Anyone? Even one I had insulted not an hour before?” said Thorin. He paused, shifting Bilbo's hand in his grasp, running a thumb of the back of his knuckles, unable to meet his eye as he sought the next words. He felt a strange sear in his heart to even speak the words. “My father was the last one to try to put himself between me and a battlefield.”

Bilbo gave a sharp intake of breath. “Ah, I always wondered why you were so furious when you woke up.”

“I had forbidden the Company to put my life above any other, only you were not informed, as there seemed little point. Indeed, it seems an ill-fate follows any who do," Thorin said, fingers tightening around Bilbo’s. "But as I said, I think my father would have thanked you for disobeying.”

Bilbo’s expression twisted into something like grief, and he leaned in to press a chaste kiss to Thorin’s forehead. “It’s not unlucky to protect you, Thorin. You should let us do it more often.”

* * *

The first raven from Dwalin arrived nearly a year after he'd departed for Ered Luin. It was seven months journey even without the disasters that had befallen their Company. Some allowance had to be made for recovery, for some weeks spent in Rivendell where they were now honored as royal guests of a reborn kingdom, rather than as vagabonds. Some time too for lingering in the Shire, where knuckle-dusters were put to good use, pounding on round hobbit doors and reclaiming the last of Bilbo’s possessions that had slipped through the cracks when Gandalf had returned those years before and interrupted an auction, of all things. Another month spent organizing the roads to Erebor, one more to forget entirely his promise to send a raven immediately. Written words were not Dwalin’s specialty.

“ _Business settled. Heading home_ ,” was the terse reply, bound to the ankle of a raven that had just alighted at the rebuilt towers.

Thorin contemplated the note, small enough to wrap around his finger as a ring, the only word he’d heard from his friend and shield-brother since he departed. There was little sentiment there, little to tell what had transpired in their time apart. To call Erebor _home_ was the only hint, and it warmed him. Every day the once-refugees of Erebor streamed in to reclaim their lost home, or the home of their fathers had they been too young to remember it, or not yet born. It heartened him to see, one of the few sights that still could lift his spirits, even as it reminded him of the burdens that awaited in their care and tending, his little Company of thirteen now grown to a hundred times that number. He wanted them to see Erebor as a home, and not as he had found it: a tomb behind the hidden door.

Erebor was saved, yet Thorin wondered if he was the only one for whom it never really would be. If he had given up the right to it in the reclaiming. In madness, in toil and death, in sleepless years of sacrifice, his expectations set so high that the very Halls of Mahal could not have satisfied the longing ache in his heart for a home.

Thorin looked at the scratched, angular handwriting on the tiny a piece of parchment. Dwalin had somehow still managed to smudge the note with dirt from his fingers, up in the corner where he’d clutched it, no doubt cursing under his breath as he fought to tie the note around the bird’s leg. A smile quirked the corner of Thorin’s lips.

Then Thorin went still.

A year out, Dwalin had seen only the beginnings of the malaise, back when it was easily interpreted as the build-up of work from an influx of dwarves to the city. Back when Thorin had seen the pile of tasks grow a little higher every day, and never shrink, and had felt the first stirrings of bleakness in his heart. Something had to be done, and so Dwalin had set off to Ered Luin, intent on setting up the supply chain at the other end so that those who came east were better organized. Gruff work, hands-on work, shouting and brawling, lining up dwarves in formation, reminding them that they were _fighters_ and should act like it, even if they’d been craftsmen for decades, and wanderers before that. Active work, while Thorin remained in state, quiet, solemn, negotiating seemingly endless treaties. Dwalin had laughed when he said he did not envy Thorin his task.

What would he think when he returned and found once again a husk where his king had been?

( _It would not be the first time. Not only under dragon sickness, but a century before that when Erebor fell. When Thorin had cut his own beard short in anguish, during days so black he could not recall them except as the blur of the road beneath weary feet and the burn of sour wine at the back of his throat in those few hours of respite afforded him at night in a tavern, whichever was furthest from the camp of his father and grandfather, as for a little while he tried to forget that he had once been a prince of the greatest kingdom in the world. Dwalin had seen him then, picked him up and dusted him off and pushed him forward when he faltered. He had never said a word then, silent in his understanding._ )

Thorin released a breath. No, this was foolishness. Dwalin, who had remained by his side, who had faced death to help Thorin see reason in the depths of his madness and fought bared-teeth and bloody with him since the days when Erebor fell, would not turn away from this. No more than he had on the road. But it was six months at least until he returned, if the raven had taken a month returning to Erebor. Six months to hold on, to get better so that when Dwalin returned they might spar as they once did, drink in the taverns newly opened in the city, and force this weary exhaustion from his bones.

He had not had the time to spar since Dwalin left. An odd thought, but who amongst his guard would face their king? Who amongst the Company was not occupied elsewhere, or not his equal in a match? Only Dwalin had broken up council meetings early to drag Thorin to the training rings, even when he was still aching and pale from his injuries, and out into the field to aid stiff muscles that would never regain their strength until tested. Somehow that had all fallen by the wayside when his friend left for his journey, though Thorin had made some idle promise, at least nodded, when Dwalin asked that he keep it up, so the fight would not be too easy when he returned.

The fight would be easy now. Thorin at times doubted that he could lift a sword when the malaise was at its darkest, much less fight for anything more than his life if pushed. Then some old strength might return, some lingering stubbornness, the memory of Bilbo’s voice cracking, " _D_ _on’t you dare_ ," and the old drive not to give up in the face of impossible odds. Death did not appeal, even at his lowest point. But sleep? There was never enough of it in the day, even if he should lie abed from dawn until dusk for two days running, and in that exhaustion he had lost all connection with a warrior’s training.

Thorin frowned. Where to even begin? Did it matter, when he could always train on his own, and had since he was a child? Yet even that seemed an indulgence when his hours were spent either mustering his energy to face the council or fighting for a few spare moments to see to his family and to his husband, and let them know he was still with them.

Tomorrow, perhaps, he would go down to the sparring fields with Orcrist. Tomorrow he might see if his hands remembered their old strength, once they held a sword.

* * *

Thorin fought.

As if his life depended on it, wood splinters flying as he chopped at the wooden practice dummies, Orcrist’s blade familiar in his hand. A flurry that made his chest heave and sweat pour down at his temple, his jaw tight and his brow twisted.

There, at the edge of conscience, of focus, _there_ it was: purpose. Fighting to cut down enemies, to protect his own life, to relive again and again and again the fight across the battlefield to get to Thrór’s side, and sometimes in his dreams during the exile, Thorin had made it in time, and his arm was strong enough and his skill sharp and he ended it all there. Sometimes in dreams Azog fell before he could ever haunt them, yet every morning Thorin still awoke on the road, sleeping amongst branches and stone. Always looking east, and he felt the cry he would never release twisting inside him as if nailed to his stomach, but at least it drove him forward. He could not turn back and save them, but he could fight his way forward and strike down their enemies, and he could know his purpose and the march of every step was towards what he _could_ take back, even if he could not reclaim everything that had been lost. Even if he could not save everyone who had been lost.

Yet here, today, the moment was receding. Desperation chased exhaustion and Thorin struck until his arms were heavy as iron bars, and his hands were numb and yet he felt nothing and he felt nothing and he felt nothing, because he was no longer chasing.

The sword tip clattered on the ground.

Thorin stormed from the practice ring, dwarves parting before him in alarm. His skin was hot and dripping sweat and the hours had flown. It was noon and he had gone there at sunrise. When he slammed the door of their quarters open, it was well that he had not brought the sword with him, or he would have struck out, simply to strike out at anything and he snarled pacing, clawing his fingers through his hair as his blood burned and his lungs closed up as they had not when he struck and struck and struck. Thorin tangled a hand through his hair, sweat slicking the tendrils from his face and he knew his eyes were wild and his heart searing, and he only came snapped from his panic at the sound of the door opening behind him and turned to see Bilbo standing in the door, bewildered.

“Thorin, what—?” Bilbo began.

“What is the point of it, Bilbo?” Thorin exploded, stalking around the room like a caged animal. He was shouting, but did not realize he had done so until Bilbo’s eyebrows shot up and he took a half step back. “What is the _point_ now?”

“I’m not sure I can say, as I haven’t the faintest what you’re talking about,” Bilbo said, holding up both hands for calm. “But considering how you just frightened the life out of half your kingdom by storming in here like this, I gather there is something troubling you. Would you care to tell me, or I shall I leave you to it?”

Thorin looked about the room, seeking answers where there were none in the corners of the ceiling and the runic engravings of his ancestral halls, in the tapestries that padded their room and the carven stone. Thorin chewed the inside of his cheek, and struggled to find words. Bilbo was silent, patient, calming him just by being there. “To fight for. Everything I… everything we… All was for _this_. For this moment, for these halls, for this life, for _their_ lives,” he said, gesturing out to the door to the halls of Erebor swarming beyond.

“Yes,” Bilbo said, nodding cautiously. “And you’ve done admirably to make it all happen, and with only a few hiccups along the way if I daresay so. I’m not sure I understand why this would upset you?”

Thorin choked on the word, feeling it build at the back of his throat, as had his plea to Fíli, never voiced, as all the words he almost said to Gandalf in their sessions. An admission and he did not know how to say it, how to say it without repudiating all they had fought for, without diminishing his home and all it meant to have it returned. Without saying it at all. But it was Bilbo and all that existed between them since the dark days of sickness had been honesty and his voice came out small, a plea, a crack in the stone as he said, “ _I do not know what to do_. I do not know what we— I can no longer see what I am fighting for. If there is anything to fight for.”

“Oh,” Bilbo’s brow drew together. “Is it really a problem? Does there always have to be a fight?” He took one look at Thorin. “Ah, never mind, foolish question.”

“Always I have known,” Thorin insisted, and began to pace despite himself. “Every step was towards regaining what was lost. But now we have it, so why am I not content?” He took a step towards Bilbo, hands open in supplication. “Don't you see? This was supposed to be the end. Yet I cannot feel that it is over. When I fight, I feel as if I fight for nothing. When I walk it is towards nothing. When I take a breath, there is no purpose in following it with the next. Bilbo,” he looked up, looked lost, “why wasn’t it enough?”

“I think that Gandalf—” Bilbo began, head tilting towards the door, still open behind him but in two strides Thorin passed him, closing it and turning.

“I am not asking for the wizard’s meddling,” Thorin snarled. “I have told him this before, and it has brought me no help. I am asking _you_.” He stopped, and his expression softened when he saw that Bilbo had started at the slamming door. “Please.”

Bilbo floundered, hands fluttering as an array of emotions flitted over his face. “Well, that is… I can’t say that I know, Thorin. I agree, I would have thought that taking back your home should have been enough. But it’s been clear for quite some time that it’s not. Not for you.” His lip twitched in a self-deprecating half-smile. “But well, what am I supposed to say? You would hardly listen if I said we should leave Erebor and, oh I don’t know, go on some adventures of our own now that it’s all squared away. Or to the Shire, heaven forbid, which you would probably despise. So, what else is there?”

But at Bilbo’s words, Thorin’s heart gave a painful lurch and he was left gasping and breathless, the fire from the morning’s frustration hot in his blood but fading as he stared uncomprehending at Bilbo.

“Would that make you happy?” Thorin said, with more urgency and desperation in his voice than he had ever meant to show. The thought alarmed him, even as something caught within him, like a match flaring to life. Had he been selfish? Had he robbed Bilbo of his home in the seeking of his own, hollow as it was?

But Bilbo laughed, light and airy, waving his hand dismissively, and Thorin felt that match flicker. “Robbed me? Whatever would I do in the Shire these days? I’m sure I’m quite unwelcome there now, goodness, there’s nothing for me there but odd looks and gossip. Of course I might miss Bag End, but this is where I— Thorin?”

He did not know when his gaze shifted, or when his shoulders fell. In his mind he saw stone walls enclosing him, stark and gray as a tomb, rising up and stretching out endlessly over the years like a prison sentence. He did not know when his throat tightened to the point of being unbearable, and he felt dizzy and empty and hollow at the thought, sharpened by the wild frustration of fighting and finding no peace or quiet within the movement of the sword where it had always been. He felt as if hope had been presented to him, only to be snatched away. His gaze unfocused, Thorin only shifted at a touch on his bearded cheek, guiding his gaze back.

Bilbo stood before him, frowning in puzzlement, his eyes searching Thorin’s. “Thorin, do _you_ wish to leave Erebor?”

Thorin released an explosive, shuddering breath, panic closing his throat. He swallowed around it, as he always had before, pushed it away as he always had before it could stick there. Words instead stuck in his throat, building inside him and fading and failing and crumbling. If he could only force himself to nod he knew Bilbo would see it and something would happen - something terrible, or perhaps wonderful. Something more terrifying than facing the dragon.

 _Please_ , he thought, and did not know what he begged for.

“I can’t,” Thorin’s voice cracked over the words, barely more than a broken whisper. “Don't you understand? I _can’t_.”

Bilbo looked up at him, uncomprehending, brow furrowed and lips parted as if to speak. Thorin could not bear it, but shut his eyes against the sight and turned away. It was the end of the discussion. He could not speak, did not even know the words he _wished_ to speak. After so many years fighting for his home, he could not forsake it. He could not abandon his people. He could not cower again behind closed doors like a wretch when they needed him. He could not risk once more taking only for himself, when the last time it was to grasp pathetically after the gems and gold of his people. The sight, the thought of treasure made him ill now, but so too did the jewel-like tones of the outside world, the memory of Bilbo’s home shining emerald, a sick longing which he forced back as he forced back the memory of gold’s feverish haze every day.

He knew where he was needed, he knew his fate though it closed around him like a tomb. He knew—

Dry lips closed over his own and Thorin’s eyes flew open to see Bilbo on his tiptoes, bringing both hands up to hold Thorin’s face, pulling him back from where he had turned away. Bilbo’s eyes were closed and his kiss fierce, drawing Thorin to lean down towards him. There was something desperate in that kiss, and Thorin was only just losing himself in it after the initial surprise when Bilbo broke away.

“Right, let’s try that again,” Bilbo huffed to himself, then, without warning, he grabbed Thorin by the lapels and pulled his feet up, trying to drag Thorin with him to the floor. Except to Thorin the weight was nothing at all and he looked at Bilbo askance. At Bilbo’s frustrated, flustered gaze, and in his own confusion at exactly where this was coming from, Thorin finally allowed himself to sink with him to their carpeted floor. It was vaguely ridiculous, crouching there when there were plenty of chairs and as well as their bed at hand. But Bilbo was sitting with his face inches from Thorin, staring at him intently as if trying to divine words from under his skin. “You’re too tall for your own good and I’m getting a crick in my neck. Also, you’re still sweaty and a bit vile from the training field so until we’ve got you washed let’s sit here instead of on the furniture, shall we?”

Thorin nodded, more out of acknowledgement than agreement. The shock of Bilbo’s kiss and sudden movement had banished for a few moments the haze that buzzed around his head, though he could feel himself sinking fast once again into the morass of lethargy, into the hopelessness that now even a day at the sparring field could not lift. He could feel the energy draining from his body inch by inch, but struggled to stay focused on Bilbo, on not lingering in his own mind over the hopelessness of the fact he could not even speak his own heart.

Bilbo opened his mouth, then stopped, and for good measure placed another quick kiss on Thorin’s lips, tilting his head back to take full advantage before settling back once more on his knees. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want your answer as best you can. No storming off, no backing down unless you truly cannot. But I love you, Thorin. I’m here for you, and I will not stand idly by while you fret yourself to death. Now, you looked prepared to say something a moment ago, so I will ask you again: do you want to leave Erebor?”

Once again Thorin felt the words in his throat as if they were choking him. “How could I?” he murmured. “After all these years of seeking it, how could I?”

Bilbo rocked back onto his knees, looking at Thorin, stunned. “Well. Now that is an entirely different answer, isn’t it? Before it sounded as if you thought leaving was simply unthinkable on its own.”

“It is,” Thorin insisted. His voice fell to a hush, and it felt as if they spoke of something desperately secret, something easier to say here on the floor, crouched like children, than was possible in all the stately halls of the kingdom.

“Well, no, at least no more unthinkable than a Baggins of Bag End running off into the blue,” Bilbo said, and for all the solemnity there was a self-mocking twinkle in his eye. “Thorin, I know a thing or two about responsibility. I know the importance of taking care of your family home. But I also know that sometimes that means leaving it to those who can better appreciate it, as I did with Drogo and Primula. A home should not be a prison.”

“Erebor is more than that,” Thorin insisted. “It is a _legacy_ , it is a right and a responsibility. It is the treasure of my people…”

“It is killing you, Thorin,” Bilbo said softly. “And I’m beginning to think it has been since we stepped through the hidden door.”

Thorin went silent at this, teeth clicking shut.

“You have regained the Mountain,” Bilbo continued. “Isn’t that what this was all about? I thought we stayed because _you_ wanted to. Erebor is magnificent, Thorin, and I am happy to have our friends here. But I would not stay here if not for you. I would not have the heart to. I am here because of you, and I will follow you wherever you go, into any peril, if only to be by your side.”

“And that offer is nobly made, but where else would I go? What else would I be?” Thorin said, meaning the words as a statement, but he could hear the question in his own voice, the plea.

Bilbo blinked. “Well, anything you liked, I suppose?” he said as if it were the most simple matter in the world, so quickly it made Thorin’s head spin and the words whisked around him like will o’wisps, insubstantial and unreal, but glimmering in the air. “You have no shortage of gold, and your heirs do well enough on their own, though of course everyone loves you and would be sorry to see you go. But I don’t believe there’s a soul in Erebor that would wish you to torment yourself over the crown if it’s not something you wanted.”

He hummed to himself, nose twitching as he thought, perhaps not seeing Thorin’s blank expression for the well of disbelief behind it. “Stopping by the Shire would not be such a bad idea, just to check in with the relatives. Perhaps we could catch up to Dwalin, or meet him halfway on the road once he sets back from Ered Luin. Maybe go see your sister in the Blue Mountains. Why there’s no end to the possibilities! I’ve never been to Gondor, have you? I’ve heard the white city is magnificent as well, not a patch on Erebor in size, but nothing to sneeze at. It might be a nice change for you to travel somewhere just for the fun of it, a long walking holiday, rather than because we’re fighting for our lives. I confess, coming this far has left me with no little amount of curiosity about the rest of the world. It’s so very large and mysterious, though I’m sure the two of us together would do well enough, I suppose there are some dangers to consider…”

Thorin was staring, expression blank as Bilbo prattled on. Finally, in a hoarse whisper he managed, “Would you like that?”

Bilbo huffed a sigh. “Would _you_ like that, Thorin? I could easily imagine that after all your wanderings, the thought of a long walking holiday would be a horror. I was only thinking of some of my own plans that I’ve had at the back of my mind, idle fancies really so long as you wish to remain here. I wouldn’t act on them unless you joined me.”

“But if you wanted to, if you asked it of me, then perhaps I might…” Thorin said, and did not know what he spoke. He felt as if he was raving, as if he played that Gandalf challenged him with, to imagine the impossible. “If it made _you_ happy…”

Bilbo gave him a queer look. “What are you asking for, Thorin? Permission?”

“No,” Thorin said quickly, automatically. “Of course not.”

He stopped. Bilbo looked at him, blinked, looked around, nodded, the only motion in the stretching silence when Thorin did not move to elaborate. His stomach churned and he felt a curious breathlessness.

“Well,” Bilbo said uncertainly, face twisted in polite skepticism. “That’s good, I suppose.”

Which may have been the end of it, had not Thorin blurted at the same time, “But if I was?”

He did not know where the words came from, he had not felt so shaky and uncertain since he was a child, but he had felt that wall of silence rising up around him trapping him as if within a tower and had spoken quickly, on impulse, before those gates could slam shut, not even knowing what he would say until the words were out.

He might have berated himself for them immediately. Permission? From Bilbo? What under the earth would he possibly need that for, save that Bilbo was his husband and of course he would not uproot their lives needlessly, certainly not on some feckless impulse to flee the home of his forefathers?

“Then I suppose I would ask: why?” Bilbo said, no longer appearing so baffled, but rather focused, searching, his brow furrowed as his eyes flitted across Thorin’s face, though what he read there Thorin could not say.

Silence. Having gasped out those few words before the wall of silence went up, he could not find it within himself to chase them with more. His teeth were a prison of their own, and for what must have been the thousandth time, Thorin wondered if Gandalf had been wrong, if he should seek another wizard’s advice, because this malady must be some form of curse. One that turned his body and mind against him, and struck him dumb when only a few words would… would…

Would what?

“Thorin,” Bilbo said carefully. He did not rise, or seem in the least frustrated by Thorin’s many silences. “If I told you that I wanted to leave and take you with me, that I wanted nothing more in the world than to get you out of here, whatever your protests or responsibilities, and that I would not take no for an answer…” He licked his lips, hesitating over the word, frowning at them. “Would it _help_?”

Thorin flinched. He had known wounds that had burned less when prodded, and that was what it felt like: an open wound. It jarred him, robbed the breath from his lungs, but in doing so the wall around him seemed to crack, just a little, just enough to speak his way around it.

“There are many things a king may not do,” Thorin said, voice hoarse and low and when Bilbo’s mouth opened to interrupt he held up a hand. “Just as there is much that prince may not, or a dwarven lord, or an heir to the line of Durin.”

Bilbo shifted and settled back on to his calves, listening intently.

“A king may not abandon his kingdom.”

“That was really not my question, Thorin, it was only a hypothetical, but I’m sorry if I—”

“Shh,” Thorin admonished, and continued as Bilbo went silent. “A son may not let the death of his father and grandfather go unpunished, not if it is within his power to avenge them.”

“Oh, is that where this is going?” Bilbo said, frowning. Thorin nodded and continued in low, hushed tones.

“A prince may not allow his people to suffer, if it is within his power to mend it,” Thorin said. He closed his eyes, feeling as if he spoke from the deepest wells of memory, the lessons spoken to him on his grandfather’s knee when he was barely old enough to walk. “An heir to the line of Durin may not speak ill of his people, or sacrifice their lives needlessly.”

He swallowed, the last one sitting heavy on his tongue, in his heart, in his feet as it had dragged him forward years upon years upon years. “The grandson of Thrór may not ignore his grandfather’s dying wish. He may allow Erebor to lie in ruin for many years, but not forever. Even when he knows the mountain may hold his death, his sickness and doom, he may not abandon it. He must carry the wishes of the dead in his heart step after step, year after year. He must not forget, even when others do. Even when others find a good life for themselves. He may not move on, because there are none alive to release him from his oath. Only when it is fulfilled may he be released.”

His gazed had been lowered as he spoke, and he raised it now. “Tell me, Bilbo, am I yet released?”

Bilbo was looking back at him, expression crumpled and stunned as if he looked upon something small and precious that had shattered upon the floor. He smoothed it immediately at catching Thorin’s gaze, but the shadow of grief remained. “That depends, I suppose, if part of that oath was to rule wisely and fairly until you work yourself into an early grave,” Bilbo said thoughtfully, some a little levity entering his tone but he cleared his throat and pursed his lips. “Thorin, I can’t believe for a moment that your grandfather, or at least your father, would have ever wanted this for you if they knew it would make you so desperately unhappy.”

“I am not—” he began, but at a sharp look from Bilbo relented, and said instead, “It is not important whether I am unhappy.”

“Would you be so dismissive if it were Fíli and Kíli?” Bilbo said.

Thorin offered a wan smile and scrubbed his face over his hands, seeking to banish some of the stiffness that had set into his jaw and shoulder. This, at least, was familiar ground. “I know the answer you seek, Bilbo, but truly it is not as simple as that. If I learned they were unhappy, I would do all within my power to make them glad again. But they are princes who have accepted their responsibilities to their people, and to the mountain. I could not force Kíli to quit a hard work day simply because I wished him to. I could not keep Fíli away from battle even if I feared he would come to deepest harm. They are sons of Durin, who have duties to their people and their station even greater than I can impose or excuse as king without their consent. Why do you think I allowed them on our quest?”

Bilbo blinked. “Well, I had always assumed that… come to think of it, I didn’t really know. I wasn’t aware they were your nephews for a long time, but I suppose it did strike me as odd that you would put them at risk given they were such young dwarves.”

“Young, yes, but still fully grown,” Thorin said patiently. “Fíli and Kíli have worked so that we would not starve since they were barely sixty. They have served as guards and smiths, and by all the standards of our people they are adults. I could not have refused them without shaming them, even if fear for them ate at my heart every day.” He took Bilbo’s hand then, for what he needed to say, for what they had not spoken of except in hushed and escalating apologies: for stealing, for threats, for madness, for Bilbo keeping his hands to Thorin’s breast to slow the pumping of his lifeblood until help came. “It is why I could not apologize for the perils until after the city was reclaimed. Once we had the mountain, and all the oaths were fulfilled, only then could I say what has been in my heart, what has always been there.”

“Thorin?” Bilbo said, sounding breathless, searching Thorin’s face and clutching his hand back with fingers that had gone clammy from the heat of Thorin’s hands.

“You hobbits must think us very strange, taking our loved ones into danger,” Thorin murmured. “There was no choice. The oaths were sworn, and each took up the call fully willing, I could not have stopped them.” He looked into Bilbo’s eyes. “Of course I hated it, Bilbo. How could I not? To bring my closest kin to certain death for an oath sworn long ago, for the pride of a single failed dwarf lord, who could not take back his home without a wizard’s aid? But that is not our way. I am sorry for every peril, every single one, every failure and stupidity and lost path. But I am their king, not their jailer, I cannot control them without just cause.” A smile flitted across his face, a bitter one. “Sometimes, I think the ways of your people are better, when I see their broken forms in my mind's eyes. When I remember how close it was. But it is an unworthy thought. They would have not chosen differently. When I have apologized, they have thought it was only for my actions under the sickness. Not… for all of it. I think only you understood those.”

Bilbo’s hand squeezed his, holding tight. His eyes were downcast as he listened, but his expression flickered, nose twitching once and the muscles twitching in his cheek as he clenched his jaw. At last a smile flickered and Bilbo shrugged, self-deprecating, before his expression firmed again.

“Come away with me.”

Thorin’s hand was clasped around Bilbo’s but Bilbo seized the other, holding them between them, solemnity cracking to reveal an irrepressible smile of mischief. Tookish, Bilbo liked to call it. Thorin had seen it the first time when Bilbo chased after them out his door, contract flying.

“What?” Thorin frowned.

Bilbo’s smile brightened and he leaned in, kissing Thorin hard, stealing the breath from his lungs. When he broke away his eyes sparkled, shedding years from his face. “Come with me on an adventure. Today, tomorrow… we will simply pack our things and go.”

“Bilbo, you know I cannot,” Thorin murmured, feeling wretched that he must watch that smile fall, and be the cause of it.

But Bilbo only rolled his eyes, as if Thorin was being horribly dense. “Not forever, I’ll not force you to be as unrespectable as me, running off into the blue without even a note. No, I simply mean a walking holiday, maybe for a week, or perhaps a fortnight. We both know the lads can manage the city for that long.”

“Only because they have been forced to already,” Thorin said bitterly. As if he needed further reminder of how few of his own duties he upheld, and how many he had dumped upon his young nephew and Balin.

“Precisely,” Bilbo said. He rose to his feet, his hands still clasped around Thorin’s, their fingers intertwined. Bilbo tugged at him, urging Thorin to his feet and Thorin followed, slower, so that he was once again towering above Bilbo, looking down at his husband’s face, which shone with anticipation. “Oh, no need to look so dour about it, love. It needn’t be a tragedy unless you make it so. You’ve simply given Fíli the chance to practice ruling on his own without being tossed into it all at once, a sight kinder from what you went through from what I’ve heard.”

“It is one thing to relinquish to him a few tasks, another to leave him entirely without aid,” Thorin reminded him, shame twisting to in his gut to taste the lie in his words. Perhaps he had always been at hand, but there were days upon days where he had indeed abandoned Fíli to those tasks, without any warning.

“And you know, I believe it’s this “halfsies” business that’s doing you in.” Bilbo squeezed his hand. “You need a _holiday_ , Thorin, an honest one, with proper _rest_.”

“I have rested far too much,” Thorin retorted.

“Oh, a bit here, a bit there,” Bilbo acknowledged. “But I know you, Thorin. You’re waiting for the next disaster even while you sleep. You treat every hour you spend away from the throne room as if you were a naughty child stealing sweets, rather than as well-deserved moments to yourself. When you work, you are too tired to focus on your task, and when you’re not working you are too consumed with worry to enjoy it. That’s not rest, Thorin, that’s torment!”

“Then what do you propose?” Thorin said. It was true, every moment spent in his own quarters weighed upon him, collecting dread in his stomach drop by drop until the next day when he tried again, often too exhausted from restlessness to focus on the labors he had shirked.

“ _Leaving._ A nice, clean cut-off. Where nothing can follow you there and there will be nothing piling up for you to take care of once you’re back,” Bilbo said.

“And simply wander in idleness?” Thorin said with a grimace.

“Well, that is rather the point…” Bilbo began, then stopped himself. “No, I have it.”

“I am not going to see the Elves,” Thorin said quickly, but Bilbo waved the thought away in exasperation as if it were pipe smoke.

“No of course not, I’m saving that one up for an anniversary. But there _was_ a proposal today to update the maps of the Long Lake,” Bilbo said.

“I have not seen any change,” Thorin frowned.

Bilbo sighed. “Not from here. But most of the maps were drawn in your grandfather’s day, and the lands have shifted since. I have some skill at mapmaking, even thought of volunteering if not for, well…” Bilbo quieted, his gaze flickering to Thorin, before he brightened. “Well, now we could go together.”

“I doubt I would be of much use,” Thorin said dubiously. It would take over a week to circumnavigate the Lake at anything less than a gallop, two at a leisurely pace with some stops for rest and food. He had done so before as a youth on hunting trips, what felt like centuries ago.

“To keep me company?” Bilbo said. “I enjoy my privacy, but after two weeks without anyone to talk to but my pony, I may come back “Mad Baggins” indeed.”

Thorin snorted, then paused, considering. “You would need a guide in any case, and I know the paths. Perhaps I could speak with the others to see if I can be spared for so long a time. I would not want you risking danger on your mad escapade.”

“‘Mad escapade’,” Bilbo scoffed. “A pony ride around the lake.”

“But they will likely not be able to spare me,” Thorin cautioned. “I would not prevent you from going, but understand the chances are slim that I may join you. I would not have you be disappointed.”

“Of course, Thorin,” Bilbo said placidly, and all too agreeably for the niggling of suspicion at the back of Thorin’s mind. “It still does not hurt to ask.” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your patience! I wanted to give special thanks to the beta readers for this chapter, emsiecat and magicredhead. I'm sure the chapter would be a complete mess without them!

Thorin was growing suspicious.

It began when he went to the person most likely to be vocally against Thorin’s absence for two weeks. Gandalf had come back to the mountain city expressly to help its king work through his malady, and the wizard was never one to pass up a chance to point out the value of his time. Two weeks of idleness in the middle of their treatments was more than even a king may ask of one of the world’s few wizards.

“No trouble at all, my dear Thorin,” Gandalf said, standing in the doorway of the quarters granted him during his stay. Beyond, Thorin could see a heavy leather satchel bound and closed upon the bed, in all appearance of imminent travel. “I just received word that I am needed to the south, and it would be at least a fortnight before I could go there and back. Your travel plans have done is save me an awkward conversation where I begged my own leave.”

“You are certain?” Thorin frowned, searching the wizard’s face for any sign of hesitation or deceit. Gandalf looked back, blue eyes guileless to an unsettling degree in that aged face.

“Of course. Your troubles are of great concern to me, Thorin, but they are hardly the only ones that lie heavy on my mind. And I think a few weeks out in the sun will do more for you than a dozen of our sessions. Quite a happy coincidence all around.”

Thorin bit his tongue against asking exactly when Gandalf had decided to quote his own argument about wasting the wizard’s time back at him. There was little point in protesting. Whatever good Gandalf’s sessions did him, time spent as Bilbo’s guard around the Long Lake, no matter how unneeded, was infinitely preferable. Yet even if he’d thought Gandalf would be the most stubbornly set against the errand, there were others too who might forbid it. He side-eyed Gandalf as he turned to go, eyes narrowing further as Gandalf gave him a grandfatherly smile and shut the door.

Except Thorin’s ministers and advisors were little different; some barely looking up from their work before they inclined their heads in respect to their king, and reminded him their tasks were set for the next month, and thus were entirely predictable. Thorin knew they were right, but the fact that so few would even meet his eye as he announced his intentions to leave the city did nothing to settle his unease. A weight settled in the pit of Thorin’s stomach as he walked the hallways to the final and most important dwarf he must speak to.

Then Bilbo passed him in the hallway. The hobbit’s pace was brisk, and at the sight of Thorin he flashed a quick grin and continued on his way, whistling to himself. Thorin turned his head to track Bilbo’s passage as they both continued on in opposite direction, eyebrows rising at Bilbo’s evident cheer as he trotted towards their quarters. Thorin turned back, frown deepening, and he was lost in thought when he finally arrived at the door of the petty court, Fíli’s _de facto_ office while serving as second in command of the city.

His nephew was seated behind a desk at the center of the room. Unlike the official throne of Erebor, the lord of the petty court did not need to be seen in state. Fíli was hunched over a report, but at the sound of Thorin closing the door behind him he jumped in his seat, looking wildly towards the door.

“Fíli, I’m afraid I must beg a favor…”

“Done! It’s done, anything you like,” Fíli said in a rush, tapping the stack of pages of the report against the desk to straighten them, keeping his gaze studiously on the paper.

Thorin raised an eyebrow, and in a few steps was towering above his nephew, taking the report from his hand and holding it up to the light to peruse. Details of the plumbing system, which pumped boiling water heated by the forges into Erebor’s bathhouses, greeted his critical eye. Entirely routine, with nothing to indicate why Fíli was so jumpy.

“I came to ask your leave to accompany Bilbo on his errand. It would require a fortnight, weather permitting, but I should return in time to assist you in the next month’s affairs,” Thorin trailed off at Fíli frantically waving him to silence.

“Thorin, you’re free to go now, tomorrow, or next week. You won’t find any argument here,” Fíli said, and snatched the report back from Thorin’s hand, holding it before him like a shield.

“It would be wrong of me to leave you so many duties with so little notice,” Thorin tried but at this, some of Fíli’s twitchiness gave way to a derisive snort.

“I’m not a child, Thorin. I have a few more reports to see to today, and then I join Kíli in the afternoon for a hunt while the sun is still out. I’m sure I can manage a few extra hours of court in your absence. The only thing I will miss is that scowl, the petitioners are never as frightened of me,” Fíli chuckled.

Thorin paused, the relief that had bloomed sharp in his chest dampening in the face of reality. “Nevertheless, a fortnight is an excess of time away. I can accompany Bilbo to the halfway point, then turn around to be of use here.”

“Are you trying to get me killed?” Fíli exclaimed. “Or worse, yourself? I’m fairly certain if you don’t go, Bilbo will tie you up in a sack and throw you over the back of his pony.”

“And I’m fairly certain I can fight off one hobbit if I am needed here,” Thorin said dryly.

“Oh no, I will not fall for that. A few extra hours work is far better than the indignity of being slain at a hobbit’s hands. Here lies Fíli, son of Dis, laid low by Bilbo’s letter opener,” Fíli said.

A smile twitched the corner of Thorin’s lips despite himself. “Only tell me if you are being held hostage against your will. Blink twice, and I will save you from our hobbit’s wrath.”

Fíli scoffed, “Not worth the risk. Now, go on before he sends search parties. I’m sure the Mountain will not collapse behind you. Balin is here too, after all.”

“As is Kíli. It is his duty to aid you as well,” Thorin pointed out.

“Good point. In that case, we are surely doomed. It has been an honor knowing you, Uncle, enjoy your pony ride,” Fíli said, standing to guide Thorin towards the door.

“If aught goes wrong, you will send a raven…”

“ _Yes,_ Thorin, _safe travels_ , Thorin!” Fíli exclaimed in exasperation, and with a light shove had him out the door, which slammed behind him. “And please call off Bilbo!” came muffled through the door.

Thorin shook his head, and rubbed a hand over his mouth as he turned to walk back the other way. His face felt stiff and strange, and his steps lighter than they had been in ages as he walked back to their quarters. He was too lost in thought to notice the odd looks he received from other dwarves in the hall, or how many did a double-take at the sight of their king’s first smile in months.

* * *

Thorin did not sleep well that night, if he drifted off at all it felt more like a daydream than rest. His skin felt tight and hot, and his heartbeat too rapid, as if it were the night before a battle. Bilbo slept peacefully beside him, his skin cool beneath Thorin’s hand, and Thorin tried to draw some peace from his husband's sleeping form.

To no avail. His thoughts ran in frantic circles, and even as he hovered at the edge of sleep, nightmares formed and broke with every hour, dark or realistic by turns. Missed meetings that would decide the fate of the kingdom, yet he could not recall where they were to be held and he wandered hall after hall knowing the seconds ticked by without him present. Another where they already sat astride the ponies, the mountain far behind him in the distance, and only then did he remember a matter of grave importance waiting behind, that he had not recalled until that very moment. Another where somehow he had forgotten that Smaug only fled Erebor that day, had not been shot down by Bard, and now he returned…

Thorin woke from the last bathed in cold sweat, more tired than when he had fallen asleep, and though the dream crumbled like sand from his mind, leaving only the vaguest impression of Smaug’s return, his heart would not still its thunderous pace and he only stayed awake, staring at the canopy above until Bilbo stirred at dawn.

* * *

Two day’s sleep would not have been enough to make up for the evening before, and there was nothing for it. Thorin’s pony’s followed Bilbo’s without prompting, the pair well matched. Bilbo was no more talkative for all his eagerness the day before; he glared up at the dim morning light like an irritable owl. Yet something stirred beneath Thorin’s exhaustion as the stable doors opened, like a match catching alight within him, giving the tiniest surge of energy to his grudging movements. This was not the first sour morning he had endured before a long road, not even the hundredth. Cold muscles remembered colder days and what was needed to overcome them, memory so automatic it overrode his mind. His heels moved without thought to speed his pony on so he drew alongside Bilbo. He would not have seen it, but he sat taller in his saddle as he did so, and between weariness and the weight of armor on his shoulders the only thing missing was a half-empty belly to bring him back to the days of the Quest for Erebor, or the Exile before it.

“Just like old times, eh?” Bilbo said, glancing at Thorin out of the corner of his eye.

Thorin glanced back to Erebor not a hundred paces behind them and could not suppress a snort. “A much easier journey if Erebor had been this close the entire time.”

Bilbo huffed a sigh. “I was just thinking, all we need now is to get lost or nearly eaten and I’ll shed a tear of nostalgia.”

“Do not forget kidnapped or imprisoned,” Thorin grinned despite himself. “I have so dearly missed being blackmailed and held ransom for my own people’s gold.”

“Going days without a bath has always held a special place in my heart,” Bilbo added conversationally. “And trail rations, my favorite thing. You know I was just thinking _cram_ would go excellently on salad, just to have that tasteless, mealy flavor back again.”

“I take it there is no _cram_ in these saddlebags?” Thorin said.

“Not a crumb,” Bilbo said triumphantly.

At this, Thorin did glance back over the bags. Bilbo had them packed while Thorin was begging his leave of Gandalf, Fíli, and his advisors, and so he could only trust Bilbo’s judgment as to their contents. Clothes, naturally, Thorin could see his heavy, fur-lined cloak rolled in a bundle just behind his saddle. This far north it would still be of use at night and if the days grew brisk, even with March even now shading to April. He had brought Orcrist, and would have felt naked without it, as well as an array of other, better-concealed weapons and a shield for good measure if he should be disarmed down to his short sword. Bilbo only had Sting, and the mithril shirt gleaming at his collar beneath a woolen coat of warm maroon and gray mittens that bore the hallmark of Ori’s work.

Bilbo’s feet were bare as ever and only fit in the stirrups because they were specially made. After hundreds of miles walked over stone and snow, several years of marriage, and various attempts to either graciously offer a foot massage or gain some measure of revenge for his own ticklishness, Thorin had learned that those hairy paws were as tough as hooves and about as sensitive. The pony would probably hurt itself if it stepped on Bilbo’s feet, and he wouldn’t flinch. Though Thorin’s own feet were shrouded in heavy socks and iron-tipped boots against the cold, Bilbo likely did not feel anything at all below the knee.

Beside said knees was a parcel Thorin could not identify, a heavy square case lashed with leather straps, mostly concealed by Bilbo’s other packs. Pots and pans jangled on the opposite side, and it was no mystery to see which bags held food and which clothing. But Thorin squinted, only for Bilbo to follow his gaze and shift the parcels to conceal it.

“Just a little gift I brought along to celebrate. You’ll find out tonight when we make camp,” Bilbo said, and clucked his pony forward, away from Thorin’s prying eyes, darting ahead and over a small hill.

Thorin’s faint grin fell as they moved beyond Dale, the sun above the horizon but still obscured by a low overhang of cloud. Beyond… beyond it was impossible to smile at such a sight.

Desolation spread grim and gray as far as the eye could see. Below, the Long Lake shimmered silver in the distance, but so far away it did nothing to relieve the gloom that lay heavy as a laden heart. Charred rocks and withered grasses, yellow and sickly, spread far as the eye could see down to the lake. Whatever fields the Men of Dale worked were well out of sight and most food still came by caravan all these years later. Even with little eye or interest in greenery, it did not escape Thorin that the land was dead for miles in every direction around the Mountain.

“Sometimes I wonder if it would be better just to burn it,” Bilbo mused aloud. He surveyed the track before them with a frown, absent-mindedly wrinkling his nose at the sight of the poisoned landscape before them. Thorin’s heart sank.

“Is there really so little hope?” Thorin said, following Bilbo’s gaze over the gray plain.

Bilbo would know better than he when growing things were past saving. Still, it hit like a blow to hear the lands that surrounded his home were fit for nothing better than destruction, long beyond hope of ever returning to the tilled fields and windswept grasses of his youth. That barren rock and dirt would be better than the blight before them. For in truth, how could he not have guessed? That there truly was no going back, that time was lost as surely as the years, never to be regained.

“Hmm?” Bilbo said, and shook his head as if rousing himself. His pony mirrored his action, as their mounts plodded side by side. “Oh, it’s just something farmers do in the Shire. You burn the fields every few years to revive the soil. The fire turns it over a bit, I suppose, cleans out all the old and makes way from the new.”

“How? Can they afford to let the fields go unused for so long?” Thorin said. Mines were deepened until they could yield no more; there was no step one could take to renew their treasures. They could only be worked to exhaustion, to depletion and abandonment. The lifecycle of a mine was a straight line towards its end, which could only be delayed but never stopped entirely. Once the deepest reserves of treasure and strength were plumbed, there was nothing more to give.

“It’s that or lose them for longer,” Bilbo replied. “If a field is overused to the point of exhaustion, it will yield less and less every year. It’s better to let it rest and lie fallow for a few years after a cleansing, and let nature do its work. The longer the rest, the better the yield once the seeds are sown there again. Some farmers cycle crops as well, there’s a whole art to it more complicated than anything I use in my tomato patch, but at least the basics apply. Essentially, if you do not make some allowance for rest as part of your planning, you’ll lose more in the long term.”

Thorin shifted, unsettled by the turn of the conversation for reasons he could not quite name. “I would think this land has seen enough of fire.”

“Oh, but fire does not always have to be terrible,” Bilbo said. “Not if it is controlled and used to good purpose. I should speak to Bard once we return. It never occurred to me that the fishermen of Lake-town may not have thought of this, I simply assumed there was a reason they had not tried. It’s just the right time of year for it too.”

“Perhaps so, if they serve no better purpose now,” Thorin agreed.

Bilbo tutted. “Yes, but with proper care, they will again. Look, we’re very nearly to the edge as it is.”

They crested a low rise dotted with jagged stones, and below the Long Lake stretched before them. The brisk spring air kicked up, ruffling Bilbo’s curls, momentarily catching and distracting Thorin’s eye as they trotted over the ridge. The gray landscape with its aura of illness and exhaustion from years of a dragon’s poison was nowhere to be seen ahead of them. It faded out within a hundred yards, yellow shading to early spring green. There were wildflowers budding tiny and white in the distance like patches of late snow. They grew richer the closer they traveled towards the lake, which spread wide and bright as a silver bowl as far as the eye could see away.

Thorin frowned. “I remember the desolation spreading much farther when we first arrived.”

Bilbo turned from where he had been looking out over the landscape with every sign of contentment, and looked at Thorin. “Has it really been that long since you left the city? No wonder you’ve grown gloomy. Fíli and Kíli could have told you from their hunting trips that this land has been cleared for the last year, the blight only remains immediately surrounding the dragon’s lair. Which, I suppose would be the problem in your case.” Bilbo frowned, looking thoughtful. “Well, come along, the trip is not all holiday, and I’d like to get a few drawings in before we set up for lunch.”

He clucked his pony forward, Thorin’s pony following of its own accord, freeing Thorin to watch as gray gave way to green the further they traveled from Erebor, as the morning sun shaded to gold over the Long Lake.

* * *

Thorin was quiet during Bilbo’s first day of work, not wishing to interrupt the hobbit and curious as to his methods. The accuracy of dwarven maps was hardly the stuff of legend, unless that legend was in how fiendishly abstract and difficult to read they could be. His people reserved their skill for mapping underground, where their sense of the stone gave them a rich understanding of the paths that traveled up and down as well as forward. On the surface “laughable” would be a kind way to describe dwarven cartography.

Whereas Bilbo spoke of his love of mapmaking as if it were a hobby like jewel crafting: entertaining, useful, and a respected profession for some. He took out a bewildering array of instruments and set to work on his parchment, assembling a lap-desk and sitting on a stone beside the lake while Thorin kept an eye on the ponies (who needed very little tending after so short a ride).

The quiet was… useful, for sorting through the many thoughts that lay just below the surface, like ore in a freshly opened mine, courtesy of Gandalf’s conversations. He felt the presence of the Mountain and all its troubles within like a prickle at the back of his neck, but facing away and out towards the wild grasses that surrounded the Lake he could almost let the spring breeze blow the cloud of worry from his head. A fanciful notion, but even Thorin was not so dour as to torment himself for what was truly beyond his control. Every preparation had been made to keep Erebor self-sufficient while he was gone. Barring another dragon (and he counted it as a victory that he could make this joke to himself without the cold shudder it once sent through his bones) there was nothing he could do but serve as Bilbo’s assistant until they returned in a fortnight’s time.

What a strange thought.

* * *

They swung wide of the ruins of Lake-town as they went South, but there would be no avoiding it upon their return journey so long as they followed the water. They would cross the first tributary that flowed from the Lake in five days time at their current pace, at the ferry waiting at the narrowest point.

The first half of the journey was easiest, following the water way most traveled by merchants it had one benefit that was less common on the dangerous, southwestern edge of the Lake far on the edge of the wilderness and that was…

“Way stations,” Bilbo sighed in relief as they caught sight of the cabin at the edge of the water in the distance. From it jutted a long pier into the water meant for accommodating fishermen’s boats, left untouched by dragon fire but maintained after the destruction of Lake-town. “And I thought we would have to resort to our tents. Tents… how quickly did we lose our tents our first time here, love?”

Thorin swung himself down and was already working the buckles on his pony’s saddle as he considered the answer. “Lost with the ponies after the run in with those trolls, replaced in Rivendell, lost again in the Misty Mountains, replaced by Beorn, which were then lost to Thranduil’s hospitality,” as they liked to refer to it, “replaced in Lake-town, burned up by dragon fire… which begs the question, which time do you mean?”

“All right, all right, understood!” Bilbo laughed. “My point being, we slept under the stars often as not.”

“Not by choice,” Thorin retorted, and began to unload the saddlebags in short order before moving on to help Bilbo with his heavier parcels.

“I thought the stars were quite lovely some of those nights,” Bilbo said.

“There were stars?” Thorin replied, and at Bilbo’s sigh he hid his grin an added, “I seem to recall rainclouds.”

“No, that was your mood hanging over us,” Bilbo said, and when Thorin shot him a _look_ he raised both hands in surrender. “Which--! Was completely understandable at the time, given the circumstances.”

“That’s what I thought,” Thorin said, and hid his smirk behind the task of unloading the last of their packs, turning with the second saddle only to be greeted face to face by Bilbo, inches away and taking the opportunity to steal a kiss, as well as the saddle from Thorin’s hand, and place it on the ground.

“And I’ll take care of these while you start the fire. You’re better at it anyway,” Bilbo said. “And once we’re settled, you may open your gift.”

“A gift?” Thorin said in amusement. “Have I forgotten my own birthday?”

“A gift, on your birthday? How scandalous,” Bilbo huffed. “If anything it would be _my_ birthday if you received one. We’re not savages after all.”

“Or perhaps we are,” Thorin said, and stole another kiss. “Fearsome dwarves with their swords and axes.”

“And their meticulous ledgers and indoor plumbing, I believe I’ve lived among dwarves far too long to be scared by such tales any longer,” Bilbo said.

“I’ve heard they kidnap Shire-folk on occasion,” Thorin replied. “And steal them away to their mountain holes.”

“In that case they are particularly bad at it,” Bilbo said. “Given that you left my house without waking me. How did you sign that that letter you left on the mantelpiece? ‘ _Yours deeply’_? Why Thorin, we had barely met!”

“All a clever ruse,” Thorin said. “I suspected if we left that you would come running after.”

“You were horrified,” Bilbo said dryly. “I watched where those money pouches flew. You bet against me.”

“I never gamble,” Thorin said solemnly. He placed his hands on Bilbo’s shoulder and the pony grew restless beside them, waiting for them to remove the last of the packs.

“Says the dwarf who took thirteen companions to slay a dragon, largely without a plan. You’re the greatest gambler I know, Thorin, you simply play for higher stakes,” Bilbo retorted, and Thorin had just been leaning in, thinking to steal another kiss, when he went still.

It was easy to forget, in the day-to-day rituals of running a kingdom, that once Thorin had assembled a dozen dwarves to retake his home, when years before an army had not been enough to keep it. Perhaps because it was easier to remember the decades of humiliation, wandering, and loss that had preceded it. After all, the Quest had not even taken a full year of his life. But at the thought of it he felt a surge of… perhaps not hope, but rather pride. That he was Thorin Oakenshield, a name that would be celebrated in song for years to come, the king who reclaimed the Mountain as was foretold….

Now camped on a lakeside on a walking holiday with his hobbit husband. Thorin snorted at the image, for one did not often imagine heroes from legend going on springtime jaunts. He took it for a reminder not to allow such pride to go to his head ( _not again, never again_ ). It seemed good a time as any to finish his plans for that kiss, marveling a little at the lightness in his heart, at how easy it was to be so impulsive without the oppressive weight of the city bearing down upon him.

“So, what is the gift?” Thorin said.

“I meant to give it to you after dinner, but if you are so impatient…” Bilbo said, and unbuckled the odd package from among the packs, passing it to Thorin. In front of the cabin was a fire pit with some low benches beside it, the wood weathered from the elements, and Thorin settled there as he began to search for a method to unwrap the strange parcel. It was heavy, a flat square box that was several feet long and half that wide, and from the many layers of wrapping emerged...

A harp. The wood was of rich, polished walnut, intricately engraved with oak leaves and acorns, and about the size of those borne by traveling bards. Thorin stared in wonder, and ran his fingertips across the strings in a downward _thrum_.

Bilbo fidgeted by his side, looking rather pleased with himself if uncertain. “I’m not much a musician myself so I wasn’t sure what would be best, but one of the craftsmen assured me this is of the finest quality and safe for travel, so long as we don’t go tumbling down any further Goblin Tunnels. I thought you’ve had so little time for your old hobbies, and that certainly can’t be good for one’s constitution. If you can only start the fire I can see to our suppers and give you some time to get acquainted, that is if you like it of course and I haven’t bungled the whole thing—”

Bilbo’s words were stopped quite soundly by Thorin tugging at his husband’s collar, dragging him down for a kiss that elicited a muffled yelp of surprise before Bilbo responded enthusiastically in kind.

“I take it the gift is well received then?” Bilbo grinned once Thorin released him.

“It is lovely,” Thorin said solemnly. “And thoughtful. But…” he hesitated, hands wandering down the beautiful instrument. “It has been long since last I played. I wonder if my hands will remember any of their old skill.”

How long he could not recall. Thorin remembered through the haze that clouded those days of dragon sickness finding a golden harp and plucking a few, mocking notes on its strings before being distracted by greater treasures. After there had been no time and then, no energy. Even now he felt a curious bleakness looking at the instrument, thinking on how long he had let this skill lapse, a reluctance to do more than simply admire the gift.

“Start small,” Bilbo suggested. “Goodness knows, there’s no need to jump back in all at once, you have been rather busy after all. I doubt I’ll even know the difference.”

“Hardly a reassurance,” Thorin said dryly.

“Then don’t play for me, play for yourself,” Bilbo said. “It’ll be as if I’m not even here, just you watch. I shall be as invisible as a mouse.”

“There is hardly any call for that ring of yours, and besides I shall know you are here,” Thorin pointed out.

Bilbo paused, and an odd expression flitted over his face. “You know, I think I have forgotten it at home? I didn’t expect there to be any call for it on our journey and… it simply did not seem that important, with all that was going on. How very strange.” His brow furrowed, and then cleared. “Come now, you get settled, I should have everything ready within the hour.”

Bilbo wandered into the cabin, leaving Thorin alone with the harp and the cold fire pit. Duty always came first, and so he set the harp aside and set to work lighting the fire.

His hands moved methodically, laying the coals they had brought with them from the mountain, and beneath his hand fire caught, only a spark at first. It shuddered and flitted, threatening to die by even so much as a breeze. He stayed at it, patient, using his breath to coax it to life, feeding dry twigs until, little by little, its strength grew. The spark flourished, spreading to a flame that fed itself, growing by the moment. It crackled and breathed like a living being, a spark reflecting golden in Thorin’s eyes, warmth bathing his skin, as bright flames consumed the gray charcoal and turned them bright.

Then, once all was done and the fire burned of its own strength, needing only a little care and tending to keep alight, Thorin took out the harp and began to play. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you've enjoyed, please consider leaving a comment, they do so brighten my day, or spreading the word about the fic via the original tumblr post found [here](http://avelera.tumblr.com/post/143087562190/burning-low-27681-words-by-avelera-chapters)!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you are enjoying so far. If so, please consider leaving a comment, it really makes the many hours spent writing worth while ^_^
> 
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> 
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